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4A I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com
Wednesday, September 12,2018
Local woman champions child cancer research
By Allie Dean
adean@dawsonnews.com
When Dawsonville resi
dent Anna Tobolski lost
her 13-year-old niece to
cancer last year, the sud
denness took her by sur
prise.
Emma died only four
months after her February
2017 diagnosis with stage
4 osteosarcoma, or bone
cancer.
“We thought she had a
hip fracture, her hip was
hurting and we took her in
for an MRI,” Tobolski said.
“The very same day the
doctors came in to give us
the MRI results, they told
us that she had osteosarco
ma, that it was stage 4, that
there was absolutely no
treatment and she had
months to live.”
An otherwise perfectly
healthy child, Emma was
an advanced student who
was already studying for
the SAT, Tobolski said. A
very painful cancer,
Emma’s cancer was in her
spine and hips, affecting
her nervous system and
eventually taking away her
ability to walk, move her
arms, sit up and see.
A mother of five,
Tobolski was like a second
mom to her sister’s child.
“We were extremely
close to her. It’s devastat
ing because you really
think of your children as
kind of being invincible in
some ways. You really
never even fathom some
thing like that with your
child, and then to be told
there’s no treatment,”
Tobolski said. “We would
have loved just a five per
cent chance to fight, and
she had zero. You basically
had to just wait for her to
deteriorate.”
Though Emma’s death
was a devastating loss to
her family, the personal
experience showed
Tobolski that many forms
of pediatric cancer are
incurable, underfunded
and too many children do
not survive.
Emma’s specialist told
Tobolski that doctors are
still using the same treat
ment for bone cancer as
they were in the 1970s,
and that there has only
been one drug approved
for pediatric cancer in the
past 20 years.
“It’s really an injustice
to think that the cancer that
she got hasn’t had any new
treatment since the 70s,”
Tobolski said. “50 years
has went by and the inci
dents of pediatric cancer
has actually risen 29 per
cent, and yet they’ve still
only approved one drug.
They just don’t designate
money to research.”
Tobolski also said that in
80 percent of the children
that get diagnosed with
cancer, when they’re diag
nosed it’s already metasta
sized, which means it’s
Allie Dean Dawson County News
Anna Tobolski poses with a gold bow placed on her mailbox for the month
of September.The bows are to raise awareness about childhood cancer and
the need for more research on the devastating disease.
'It's devastating because you really think of your children
as kind of being invincible in some ways. You really never
even fathom something like that with your child, and then
to be told there's no treatment.'
Anna Tobolski
already spread to other
parts of their body.
“I wonder sometimes
even with Emma, she was
already stage four, it had
already spread everywhere,
and yet she had no real
symptoms besides muscle
pain and ache pain,” she
said.
Tobolski said that even
though it’s a low percent
age of kids that get cancer,
it only takes one for it to
matter to a person. And
even though the survival
rates for pediatric cancer
have increased, the health
impacts are still life-long.
“Fertility, heart damage,
growth defects, a bunch of
different things...and a
third of them die from sec
ondary cancers...because
of the toxic treatment,” she
said.
These statistics were
alarming to Tobolski, so
she set out to raise aware
ness about how little
research is being done on
childhood cancer.
Numbers provided by
CURE Childhood Cancer,
an Atlanta-based charity
dedicated to conquering
childhood cancer by fund
ing targeted research and
supporting patients and
their families, show that
less than four percent of
the National Cancer
Institute’s research budget
goes to solving childhood
cancer.
Further harrowing statis
tics from CURE state that
one in five children with
cancer won’t be cured.
So in honor of
S eptember being
Childhood Cancer
Awareness Month,
Tobolski decided to bring
CURE’S Gold Bow mail
box campaign to north
Georgia. The campaign is
simple- large gold bows,
made at CURE’S head
quarters in Atlanta, are
purchased by neighbor
hoods and business owners
and are placed on mailbox
es to help spread aware
ness about childhood can
cer.
The campaign has a
strong foothold in Atlanta
and Savannah, and
Tobolski said she wanted
to see the bows come to
Dawsonville.
Tobolski sent out an
email to the homeowners
in Gold Creek subdivision,
where she lives, as well as
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Expires 10.24.2018
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARINGS
Notice is hereby given that three public hearings shall be held
by the Dawson County Board of Commissioners at the Dawson
County Government Center, 25 Justice Way, Assembly Room 2302,
Dawsonville, Georgia as follows:
• 6 p.m. Thursday, October 4,2018 - Public Comment on Proposed
FY 2019 Budget
• 4 p.m. Thursday, October 11,2018 - Public Comment Hearing
required by Georgia law
• and 6 p.m. Thursday, October 18,2018 - Additional opportunity for
Public Comment.
The Proposed Budget will be presented by the Chairman of the
Board of Commissioners to the Board and the public at the Board’s
meeting of Thursday, September 27,2018. Once it has been
presented by the Chairman, the Proposed Budget will be available
for review by the public at the County Clerk’s office on the second
floor of the Government Center during normal business hours.
At the October 18,2018, meeting the Board will consider and may
adopt the FY 2019 Budget. The Public Comment Hearings on October
4 and October 18 are not required by law but are being held to give
citizens a greater opportunity to be heard prior to adoption of next
year’s budget.
solicited local businesses
to put the bows out. She
even ordered extras for
places like city hall and the
local public schools to dis
play.
“My goal was 100 bows
and we ended up doing
about 175,” she said. “Now
that they’ve actually been
put up I get a lot more calls
too wanting them. I would
love next year to get addi
tional neighborhoods.”
Though her campaign
raised $4,000 just by ask
ing people to put the bows
out for the month of
September, Tobolski
doesn’t see the gold bow
program as just fundrais
ing.
“For me, this program is
about spreading aware
ness,” she said. “I would
love for people to see gold
bows across north Georgia
and be like ‘what are these
gold bows for?’ because I
just think it’s imperative to
saving our children.”
Purchases of gold bows
will help CURE fight
childhood cancer and
spread the message
throughout the community.
In the past 12 years,
CURE has contributed
more than $25 million to
research aimed at finding
safer and more effective
treatments for cancers that
affect children.
CURE focuses on fund
ing research in Georgia
and throughout the coun
try.
Last year, the charity
announced a $4.5 million
gift to support the creation
of a new Aflac Cancer
Center Precision Medicine
Program at the Aflac
Cancer and Blood
Disorders Center of
Children’s Healthcare of
Atlanta.
“We are so grateful to
CURE for this generous
gift and their continued
support of our patients and
researchers as we work to
develop new treatments for
childhood cancer,” said
Douglas K. Graham, M.D.,
Ph.D., director of the Aflac
Cancer Center and profes
sor of pediatrics at Emory
University School of
Medicine in a press release
last August. Graham is
slated to lead the Precision
Medicine Program.
“Our hope is that we
will be able to share the
treatments and protocols
developed through our
program with centers
around the country as our
new approaches are adopt
ed elsewhere,” he said.
“This is where you want
the research to start going
toward so that it’s not toxic
and it goes specifically
towards a certain cancer,”
Tobolski said. “As wonder
ful as some of the other
programs are, like St.
Jude’s which is such a
wonderful hospital, the
Aflac center is the only
one doing research for
actual new treatments or
new medicines.”
Kristin Connor, CURE
Childhood Cancer’s execu
tive director, said in the
press release that she was
excited to grow the long
standing relationship with
the Aflac Cancer Center.
“CURE’S mission is to
drive innovative childhood
cancer research that will
move the needle closer to
therapies with fewer side
effects for children with
cancer, and, eventually,
cures,” Conner said. “We
believe bringing precise
medicine capabilities to
Atlanta is a very important
step in advancing our mis
sion.”
The bows have been up
for around two weeks, and
Tobolski has already seen
huge interest from the
community, and has high
hopes for expanding the
campaign next year.
“I’ve had a lot of really
positive responses,”
Tobolski said. “To me, true
awareness is sharing infor
mation that invokes action.
We had a visitor that had
come through the neigh
borhood...they had saw the
gold bows and she ended
up calling me and we had
a long talk, and she was
saying that not only did
she want a gold bow but
she also said that she was
going to run in St. Jude’s
marathon in December in
Emma’s memory and raise
some money. Sometimes
you don’t know how you
can impact people and
sometimes it’s a silly as
gold bows.”
If any individual, neigh
borhood or business is
interested in having a bow
next year, Tobolski said
they can contact her at
annatobolski @ gmail.com
to be put on the list.
For more information
about CURE visit cure-
childhoodcancer.org.
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