October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. This past Sunday, I was on hand as thousands of people took part in the Walk for Hope to Cure Breast Cancer in Glenview, Il. Nobody is more dedicated to this great cause than actress Andrea Evans, whose mother, Audrey, is a breast cancer survivor and “is doing fabulously”, according to her proud daughter.

Evans has been a celebrity spokesperson for the Walk for Hope for the last eight years.”As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, this cause is near and dear to my heart,” Evans stated to the massive crowd.

Andrea’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989. For Evans, the Walk is very much a family event, as members from her family have joined her as she participates in the Walks. This year, her beautiful little girl and husband joined her in the effort.

Cancer survivors, their families and her fans are always happy to see Evans at the events. City of Hope is also proud to have Evans on board. “We are grateful for Andrea Evans’ commitment to City of Hope and our mission to make breast cancer a curable and preventable disease,” said Dan Lacovara, associate vice president of communications at City of Hope. “The groundbreaking cancer research that takes place at City of Hope is made possible by the steadfast support from people like Andrea and the hundreds of thousands of people who support our Walk for Hope.”

Walk for Hope to Cure Breast Cancer events have raised more than $27 million for breast cancer research, treatment and education programs at City of Hope since its inception 13 years ago. The Walks take place in several major U.S. cities each year.

Evans’ efforts don’t end with the Walk. Together with the owner of LATHER, Evans created Soap for Hope. Evans explains, “I developed it from the ground up. The scent, the look, the package…everything,” but more importantly, “100 percent of all the proceeds go to City of Hope for breast cancer research.”

Evans is proud and excited about Soap for Hope and LATHER is just as happy. “We are extremely proud to be partnering with City of Hope, which is such an inspirational and well respected organization, as well as Andrea Evans, who inspires millions of people everyday,” explains Emilie Hoyt, president and founder of LATHER. “Both share in LATHER’s mission to help lead a more radiant life.”

Professionally, Evans is back on familiar ground, playing Tina Lord, the role she made famous on TV’s “One Life to Live“. Evans exclaimed, “I love being back on “One Life to Live”. I’m having a fabulous time. It’s like coming back home.”

Although she lives on the West Coast and OLTL is filmed in NY, Evans plans on staying on as long as it is okay with her family life. For Andrea Evans, it always comes back to her family, just like with the Walk for Hope.

-John Wroblewski, distribution specialist

Last week I made a passing reference to the fact that my husband and I found that one of the conveniences of our hotel location in Chicago was its proximity to Northwestern Hospital’s emergency room. I hadn’t planned to write about that, until I remembered that there is a tie-in between the reason for our visit there and a health concern for travelers.

Actually, neither of us was the patient in this case. Our daughter was going to meet us Friday morning at our hotel for a day of sightseeing, but she called early to say she’d been awakened at 4:30 a.m. with pain in her upper back and shortness of breath. Two days before, her physical therapist was applying heat and massage to a tight/sore calf muscle and half-jokingly had commented that the location of her complaint was a little unusual for a cramped muscle, and that he hoped it wasn’t a clot, because his treatment wouldn’t be a good thing for that. The fact that Jenny is a nursing student means that her imagination is supplied with all kinds of supporting details whenever a health issue comes up, so Friday morning she had pretty well diagnosed herself with a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in a lung) resulting from a deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) in her leg.

She consulted with her nursing instructor who encouraged her to have it checked  out. Because Jen has been doing one of her clinical rotations at Northwestern, she already knew it was close to the Affinia, so that made our decision as to where to go easy (the campus health center was never a serious option, considering its limited resources).

Luckily, the ER was almost empty, and she was attended to pretty quickly and efficiently. The doctor agreed that her history (foot surgery this summer, a long plane trip in the last month, medication she takes) and symptoms pointed to an embolism, so blood tests, a chest X-ray and CT scan were all ordered. After about three hours — and we don’t yet know how many dollars – everything came back negative, and we were set free to explore Chicago. Jenny’s symptoms had dissipated, and the doctor said it was possible she’d had a small clot which had dissolved on its own (not uncommon) or something else had caused the trouble. It was an enlightening (albeit expensive) field trip for our budding nurse, and the Northwestern staff was great, but it wasn’t how we’d envisioned beginning our stay in Chicago.

It did remind me, however, that DVT is a real concern for travelers who must sit for long periods of time. The Mayo Clinic’s website gives a good overview of the condition, along with risk factors, symptoms and treatment. I recall a while back that most airlines were placing information about DVT in their safety materials, and some even referred to it in their pre-flight instructions, though I think it’s faded into the background now. It never hurts to be reminded that it’s to your benefit to get up and move around every few hours on a long flight, or pull over and stroll about if you’re on a long car trip.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure . . . and could certainly save you a trip to the ER!

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader 

I often tie people from history into my blog and I am going to do it again today. Dr. DeBakey, the doctor who invented the heart bypass, died this past weekend at age 99. He was operated on by his own procedure some years ago.

World leaders traveled to see DeBakey at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston when they needed the procedure; the most famous was probably the Duke of Windsor. Many more followed his lead even though the procedure was available in their country and had been successfully conducted thousands of times. Their reason for traveling to Houston was they wanted the “maestro” to perform the procedure.

He also pioneered the mobile army surgical hospital (MASH), which placed surgical teams closer to the front lines where they were most needed. Countless other coronary procedures were perfected by DeBakey including the external heart pump and angioplasty.

He also symbolizes the much criticized medical system of the United States. Often, individuals confuse the USA’s lack of medical coverage for all citizens or lack of socialized medicine with the quality of medical care. Those who travel know, without a doubt, that medical care in the United States is the best in the world, and, although expensive, this is the country where the most-used pharmaceuticals are developed and where the best morbidity rates are found at major hospitals.

Health is an issue and concern for business travelers and GT has addressed this in our much-read regular column on travel health, Travel RX.

-Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO