Improvement focus of women’s conference

By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE

LUCAS — Women from the area were given the opportunity to learn more about improving their overall health Thursday afternoon.

T.J. Samson Community Hospital, in partnership with the Glasgow Business & Professional Women’s Club, presented the first Women’s Health & Wellness Conference at Louie B. Nunn Lodge in Barren River Lake State Resort Park.

The event allowed women to attend several different informational sessions on their special health needs including the importance of Vitamin D and other nutritional supplements, heart health, fitness, diet, osteoporosis and hormone replacement. Hospital employees also gave free health screens to participants and various exhibitors offered products and services to visitors at the event. A professional women’s panel of doctors and a clinical pharmacist answered questions and concerns about women’s medical issues at the end of the conference.

The keynote speaker for the event, Sue Buchanan, is an author of 14 books and a 27-year survivor of breast cancer.

“I’m happy to be here. Of course, I’m happy to be anywhere,” she told the audience.

Buchanan inspired and entertained the approximately 150 women who attended the conference as she spoke about the disease that gave her a supposed death sentence and took the life of her daughter. One of her many book titles is “I’m Alive and My Doctor’s Dead.”

At the time of her diagnosis, Buchanan’s doctor said she would not be alive at the end of the year.

“And he’s dead,” she said. “I’m so glad he was wrong.”

The author said her first book evolved out of a journal she kept during “the worst year of my life” while she endured multiple debilitating chemotherapy treatments. She credited friends and faith as two of the reasons she made it through her ordeal.

Buchanan encouraged members of the audience to do whatever they could when someone close to them becomes ill.

“Do something. Do what you do best. Make a casserole. Baby sit. If you hate kids, pay for the babysitter,” she said.

The cancer survivor said the turning point in her life came when a good friend, Joy, made her a promise.

“She told me, ‘If you’ll stay alive and not die this next year, I’ll take you to the Cayman Islands,’” Buchanan said.

She did survive and her friend made good on the promise, even teaching the non-swimmer to snorkel during a “magical” dive on a coral reef.

“I felt I had really accomplished something and I wanted to live,” Buchanan said. “Joy taught me to celebrate. She almost killed me, but she taught me to celebrate.”

A strong faith in God also helped her in the fight against cancer, she said. Buchanan showed the women in the audience her Be-Dazzled Bible covered with colorful rhinestones that she carries with her.

“When facing death, the Scripture verses I learned as a child empowered and strengthened me,” she said.

Laughter is another vital element in fighting the disease, according to Buchanan. Even when it sometimes seems inappropriate, it is necessary in the healing process. She explained the reason she now wears feather boas instead of all the different colored ribbons designating the various cancer awareness groups. They were weighing down her “technologically enhanced bosom” from her reconstructive surgery following a mastectomy, she said to the laughing women.

Buchanan could even be inspirational as she talked about the death of her daughter, Dana, from breast and brain cancer two days before Christmas less than two months ago.

She quoted her daughter in her closing remarks by saying, “Don’t let your life be defined by your crisis. Don’t let other people define your life. Let your life be defined by the delicious moments ... . You’re not here by accident. You are nobody’s statistic.”

Following Buchanan’s speech, participants at the conference attended the various sessions and underwent health screens. The comments on the first-time event were overwhelmingly affirmative according to conference planners.

“The feedback was very positive,” said Laura Belcher, director of planning and development at the hospital. “Vendors were happy with the turnout.”

The only negative she heard, Belcher said, was there were too many things from which to choose and participants couldn’t see everything.

Participants Norma Redford and Georgia Albany both said they found the sessions to be informative and personally beneficial to their individual health concerns.

At the end of the day, a panel of three physicians, Dr. Alison Campbell, Campbell Medical Group; Dr. Christy D. South, Women and Children’s Clinic; Dr. Melissa Walton-Shirley, Cardiology Associates of Southern Kentucky; and clinical pharmacist, Krista Bartlett Ross, fielded a variety of questions on women’s health issues from the audience.

Bill Kindred, hospital CEO, gave wrap-up comments to the group promising this would be the first of many such conferences.

“From a man’s standpoint, women direct health care in the home,” he said. “This is going to be an annual event – getting better and better every year.”

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