Wickenheiser raising awareness for lung cancer with new campaign

Legendary hockey player and Assistant GM of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser is working to raise awareness for lung cancer in connection with Merck Canada.

During Lung Cancer Awareness Month, the “Be the MVP” campaign is encouraging thousands of Canadians to take their own health in their hands.

Wickenheiser said she was inspired to take on the cause as she lost her own grandfather to lung cancer.

“It hits home for me. Every Canadian knows someone who’s affected by cancer, lung cancer is actually one of the most common cancers in Canada.”

She said during her time in medical school, she worked a few rotations with the lung surgery teams. “Just getting a chance to see what a healthy lung looks like, what an unhealthy lung looks like,” said Wickenheiser. “And then as an athlete, knowing how important it is to breathe and have lung capacity, there’s nothing more scary as a patient than to not be able to breathe and struggle as a human being.”

Wickenheiser said they call lung cancer the silent cancer because a lot of people don’t have symptoms.

“They might come in with like a slight cough or maybe they feel a little bit short of breath, but a lot of times there is no warning sign,” said Wickenheiser. “Some of the risks and the warning signs are very obvious, you know, hoarseness, loss of voice, trouble breathing, like the things that you would attribute to your lungs. But then there is sort of a silent aspect to this.”

This also means once someone who comes in, the disease has already progressed.

“We know that like 50 per cent of people that are diagnosed in Canada are already at stage four. So when you’re at a stage four cancer, those are really tough odds to survive. It’s five per cent survival of more than three years,” explained Wickenheiser. “If we get it early at stage one, then this rate goes up to 70 per cent chance of survival.”

And Wickenheiser said since COVID-19, it’s gotten even worse.

“People come in much sicker than we saw prior to, access to family doctors means people, I think, wait at home, say it’s not that bad. And then they come in and it’s a little bit more severe than if they had seen earlier. So those are really things that I see every day when I work in medicine.”

The “Be the MVP” campaign is not only about being aware of your own health, but also your loved ones.

“If you have people that are at high risk for lung cancer, smokers, people exposed to chemicals, family history. These are reasons to see your doctor and maybe inquire about screening programs that exist across the country.”

Wickenheiser is glad to be able to lend her voice to such an important cause.

“If this campaign can save lives just from people just saying, ‘Hey maybe I should get screened I’m high risk,’ then it’s something that’s kind of cool. That’s why you go through all of the work and all of the years grinding it out to to get to this point.”