1 Kentucky Presentation Revised June 20, 2016 Good Afternoon. I am Kirk Forbes. My wife Brenda and I live in Noblesville, IN. I graduated from Purdue 1974 with a BS degree in Professional Pilot Technology and a Masters Degree in Business. I am a commercial pilot and fly business jets. Brenda and I have 3 children…. Megan – 34 yrs. – an IUPUI grad and 3 rd Grade Teacher in Tampa, FL gave us our first grand-son Joey 5 years ago. Eric – 28 yrs. – is a Purdue grad and works in the banking industry in Raleigh, NC he and his wife gave us our first grand-daughter Harper in January of last year. This Grandparenting thing is wonderful! and… Kristen – which is why Brenda and I are here… Back in 2007, our family knew nothing about HPV. As with most parents, we wanted to watch over our children, especially when they started going out with friends and dating. Our concerns, like any parent, ran the gamut including drinking, drugs, car safety and picking the right mate. The possibility of advanced cervical cancer never crossed our minds. Our daughter Kristen was 22 yrs old, a Noblesville HS alumni, graduated from Indiana University with a BS in Business and a double major in HR and Management in May 2007.
2 It was the simple things that brought Kristen the most joy. She loved relaxing with a book, watching a movie with friends, driving her red Mustang, scrapbooking, drawing, coloring, sipping chocolate milk, listening to Jimmy Buffet and the Dave Matthews Band, eating Mexican candy and spending time with Jacob, her best friend’s son. Her greatest attributes were her ability to love everyone and her strength of character. Even when things were not going well, she never lost faith. She had a great sense of humor and a wonderful laugh. Her quick wit always produced good one-liners. She looked forward to seeing her brother Eric get married, help him pick out the engagement ring and be in his wedding. She wanted to be healthy again, marry and have a family of her own. She never had that opportunity. Kristen was very special. Her brother Eric said, “She always gave me a hard time when I didn’t want to do something that could possibly bring me out of my comfort zone. --- She always had a way of making me feel comfortable. --- She was always there for me”. And her best friend Jeff said, “There was something about her presence that put me completely at peace”. No one would disagree.
3 She had just opened a new, exciting chapter in her life: Fresh out of college, a promising career with Walgreen’s in management and then the very next month her right ankle swelled up … and we spent the next year fighting advanced cervical cancer and said goodbye on June 1 st , 2008. During her final year Kristen never lost her faith, her sense of humor or the will to fight. Brenda and I felt we needed to tell her story. Kristen’s own journal entries, our email updates to friends and her poetry provided the framework to tell her story. I started assembling her story as therapy for me to get through the grieving process. The more I got into the task at hand, the more I uncovered about my daughter and her illness. Suddenly, this project became a mission to not only tell Kristen’s story but to tell it in a way that may guide other parents onto a path of keeping their children healthy. Another purpose of writing this story is to gi ve five -year-old Jacob, whom Kristen loved and treated as a son, something he can read when he is old enough to understand just what a brave young lady Kristen was….and how she loved and touched the lives of many in her twenty-three years.
4 During her illness, many of her friends were there to share tears and laughter, a late-night movie or just hold her hand. Her brother Eric overcame his hospital discomfort for his sister. Her sister Megan came home from Florida and spent most of her summer with Kristen. Best girlfriend Chelsea and best friend Jeff, along with his young son Jacob fulfilled the role of comforter and caregiver. Telling her story also gives us the means to publicly thank all of our family, church family, and friends beyond number who daily showed their concern through their emails, cards, text messages, letters, meals and generosity. Most importantly, we thank God for allowing us to have Kristen for twenty-three years. Brenda and I hope that Kristen’s story might provide comfort, hope and counsel to those patients, parents and caregivers fighting cancer. We wanted to relate Kristen’s experience with the medical community . The compassion and support of the doctors, nurses, medical staff, pharmacists, physical therapists, transporters and EMTs were unwavering throughout her illness. Everyone took part in Kristen’s battle like supporting soldiers. They encouraged us, hugged us, cried with us, ate meals with us, celebrated the small victories with us and ultimately grieved with us. They were guardian angels in Kristen’s year long journey and soldiers in her war.
5 What stands before you is a reluctant author. I never intended to write a book. My son Eric was dealing with his grief by going through Kristen’s belongings in the garage. He came into the house and said “Dad, you need to come here and see this”. By the look on his face it was pretty serious. I followed him out to the garage and he pointed at a stack of journals that he had found written by Kristen. I was really surprised. I had no idea that my daughter was such a dedicated writer. I took the stack into my office and spent the next week reading all 17 of Kristen’s journals. Two were full of poetry and song lyrics…she played the cello and guitar…and two were about her last year fighting cancer. I thought that it would be a good idea to put together a story about Kristen in a 3 ring binder with some pictures so little Jacob could read it when he is old enough to understand who this person was that loved him so much. After reading her story, a good friend of mine, Ward Degler, an author said “You should consider making it a book”. So we did. - HOLD UP BOOK – Here is the final product. The book has become the calling card for our Foundation. We worked with the publisher and now the ebook is available for only 99 cents at Amazon, BN and Googlebooks because we did not want price to prevent someone from reading its educational message.
6 We launched the book March 2009 and there are now over 2,000 copies in circulation. They can be found in Iraq, Afghanistan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Great Britain and India. We have shared Kristen’s story at several college campuses as part of HPV Awareness Initiatives. I have had the opportunity to do several radio and TV interviews including appearing on the Dr. Oz Show and NPR’s Sound Medicine Show. Kristen’s experience has been published in the Oncology Nursing Society’s Monthly magazine and was part of a case study about cervical cancer. UCLA and UC Berkley have used her story in student nurse lectures. Brenda and I were invited to Washington DC to share Kristen’s story with the Women In Government group’s Health Summit with female state legislators from all 50 states. This is much more than even we could have ever imagined. This is Kristen’s legacy. ********************* When you loose a child, your mind searches for answers as to why… why Kristen, why now? These questions have no answers. Because of our personal beliefs and Kristen’s too…. We know we will see her again someday. Perhaps my next door neighbor who is a doctor was right when he said, “Kristen and your family have suffered and sacrificed… so many others will not have to suffer and sacrifice.” On average, a woman dies from cervical cancer every four days in our home state Indiana. Texas looses a woman every day to cervical cancer. This year more than 12,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in the United States.
7 Almost 4,000 will die of this disease. On a global basis, the numbers are staggering with over 510,000 cases diagnosed. Believe me when I say …. If you or a loved one is diagnosed with high risk HPV, It will be a life changing event. Even a life saving hysterectomy is a major life changer for a family. There are over 600,000 hysterectomies in the US every year and many of those are because of cell abnormalities possibly tied to HPV. In spite of these figures, the National Cancer Institute determined through a survey that few American women have heard of the human papillomavirus known as HPV. A few months ago, I flew with a copilot who knew nothing about HPV. He had two children at the prime vaccination ages. We still have a big challenge of educating Americans about HPV. Our daughter Kristen said she had a Pap test just 18 months prior to her diagnosis. If Kristen and her doctors had known she was infected with high risk HPV, they would have kept a closer eye on her. With the new DNA based HPV tests, doctors can easily identify young ladies like Kristen who have high risk HPV. A year after we wrote Kristen’s book, Brenda and I created the Kristen Forbes EVE Foundation. EVE stands for Educate & Screen, Vaccinate, and Eradicate. Its mission is to eradicate cervical cancer and significantly reduce HPV infection rates. It educates all women and men about HPV, the HPV tests, the HPV vaccines and HPV caused cancers. Our Foundation was the recipient of the
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