Survivor and Volunteer Luncheon

  • 07 May 2017
  • 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM
  • Kennedy School, 5736 Northeast 33rd Avenue, Portland, OR 97211

Registration

  • All guests are asked to pay $20 per person to attend. If you will be joined by other guests, you will be asked to provide his/her contact information.
  • Register yourself and any other survivors and volunteers who will attend with you. Survivors and OCAOSW volunteers are free.

    Guests are welcome. Please register guests on the "guest registration" tab. Each guest is $20 per person.
Registration is closed

Our annual Survivor and Volunteer Luncheon, is scheduled for Sunday, May 7, 2017. Sponsored by Compass Oncology and AstraZeneca, the luncheon celebrates the lives of ovarian cancer survivors and those who volunteer for our organization.

Our speaker is Katya Lezin, who is an ovarian cancer survivor, BRCA positive, and the author of the book But I Just Grew Out My Bangs! Katya, who lives in Charlotte NC,  will travel to Oregon to speak at the luncheon thanks to the the generosity of Myriad Genetics.

Ovarian cancer survivors and volunteers are invited to attend free of charge. Guests are welcome to attend, but we ask that they pay a small fee for their lunch ($20 per person).

Katya Lezin's bio: Even though the extent of her Jewish lineage is a keen appreciation for a good bagel and lox, Katya Lezin is enough of an Ashkenazi Jew to inherit the BRCA-1 genetic mutation.   Her indoctrination into the world of hereditary cancer came when Lezin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in May 2011. Despite the fact that her cancer journey has included a recurrence (in November 2013), seven surgeries, months of chemotherapy, ten hospitalizations and the removal of multiple body parts, she thinks the Big C has brought more good than bad into her life.   When given the opportunity, she chooses to laugh rather than cry at some of the indignities she has suffered along the way and she’s a big believer in grabbing your moments of joy and mirth wherever you can. 

She has chronicled her cancer journey in her weekly column for The Charlotte Observer and in a memoir she wrote entitled, BUT I JUST GREW OUT MY BANGS, A CANCER TALE.  One of the silver linings of her cancer journey is that it has provided a forum for her inner standup comic wannabe, and she now travels the country as a patient advocate and survivor, speaking to cancer support groups, medical professionals and anyone who will listen to her account of the upside of being BRCA-1 positive and being a cancer survivor.  

Thanks to Compass Oncology and AstraZeneca for sponsoring the luncheon, and thanks to Myriad Genetics for sponsoring the speaker.