September 2, 2010

Denver woman needs votes to help cancer patients

Consider it a way to contribute to charity without spending a cent. A Denver woman needs your help building a website for cancer patients to better understand chemo drugs and the financial impacts.

Kristin Gustafson says getting information is a difficult patchwork of resources that isn't easy for cancer patients and their families to find or understand.

She says Chemo101 will change that.

But to get the website funded she needs people to vote for it.

She is one of 250 ideas competing for $250,000 through the Pepsi Refresh Project. Each month, Pepsi will give away $1.3 million to people, businesses and non-profits with ideas that have a positive impact on their communities. Starting Sept. 1, your vote could help launch Chemo101.

When Erika Hanson Brown learned she had stage three colon cancer eight years ago, she began drowning in information overload.

"There is a lot of information. A lot of it is confusing. It's a whole new jargon, a whole new language, a whole new world for the newly diagnosed," said Brown.

She suffered not only from a life-threatening illness, but also from not knowing how to help herself before and after starting chemo.

"A lot of these sites are trying to boil the ocean. It's out there. But you are digging through mounds and piles of information to just understand, very specifically what regiment you are going through," said Gustafson, a patient advocate.

She says Chemo101 will be a one-stop online destination to help cancer patients.

"They are grasping for hope. We want to be able to give them simple, concise information immediately," said Gustafson.

"The idea that Chemo101 would be available to me upon being newly diagnosed is extraordinarily exciting," said Brown.

She went bankrupt because of her treatments and a year of recovery. She didn't realize she could have received financial help. Chemo 101 will help find grants to pay for things like utilities and cab rides to chemotherapy.

"That vote will make a difference in any cancer patient's life. It will make it easier for cancer patients diagnosed in the future," said Gustafson.

To vote, sign up at www.refresheverything.com, search for Chemo101 and cast your vote. You can vote once a day for 30 days until Sept. 30.

The top two vote-getters win the money.

-http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-chemo-101-txt,0,7592628.story
-http://chemo101.com/