April Hero Spotlight: Megan Pervier

My dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in February of 2014. His diagnosis included the BRAF mutation, which is still in the process of being researched for successful treatments. While we were sitting in the doctor's office at UT Southwestern waiting on his scan results, my mom noticed a Free to Breathe flyer. At that moment, we decided to form a team of family and friends and start raising money for the research we knew would be critical to our family's future.

I started out by using Facebook and email to contact close friends and family members to build our team and begin fundraising. Our initial fundraising goal was $10,000, but once we saw how many people wanted to support my dad we raised it to $20,000. We reached out to high school friends, employers, former college roommates, and anyone we could think of that had been a part of my dad's life.

The response we got was unbelievable. We reached our goal of $20,000 and had more than 60 people come out to walk and "Fight for Big Daddy" in the Dallas/Fort Worth Run/Walk. This year we have raised our fundraising goal to $30,000 and are well on our way to achieving it.

Free to Breathe has been an answered prayer for our family. They are an organization that is truly dedicated to lung cancer research and education. We know from experience their efforts are changing lives. They have been extremely supportive throughout the past year, whether it was helping us with fundraising ideas, or continuously following my dad's health updates. We are so thankful for their efforts to double lung cancer survival by 2022.

When my dad was diagnosed we weren't sure what the future looked like but now thanks to his doctors, the many prayers we are receiving and the research advances made with Free to Breathe, we are hopeful for our future with him and all others facing this difficult disease. Dad is doing great and continuing to fight. So far his treatments have been very successful and we pray they continue to be. It's All Good!!

Be sure to join Megan at the Dallas/Fort Worth Free to Breathe Run/Walk, or lend your support to her team!