Cancer survivor’s spirit drives push for awareness: Her foundation brings professionals together to teach people about diagnosis and treatment.
January 4, 2000
By Laurie Lucas The Press-Enterprise
www.PE.com
Ursula Baez Renkoski developed a form of uterine cancer four years ago. A year-and-a-half later, she found she had breast cancer.
But don’t pity Renkoski. She’s a fighter. “I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” the owner of Travel Concepts in Perris declares. “I was going to beat it.”
Today Renkoski, 45, is cancer-free, but fighting a bigger battle.
“I need to help women not as fortunate as I, to help them with early detection, who have no way to pay for treatment and don’t know where to go,” she says.
To that end, Renkoski founded LACE in April 1998, a non-profit organization that stands for Ladies Awareness for Cancer Education.
The group’s original purpose was to raise $1 million for research and teach women about breast cancer. However, within the last year, the five-member board has broadened its scope to educate women and men about many types of cancer. In fact, Renkoski is targeting men in an April seminar on prostate, colon and lung cancer.
So far, she has raised $52,500, mostly from raffle tickets costing $10 apiece for cruises and from a portion of her business’ proceeds.
As LACE’s president, she has organized more than 20 seminars, including luncheons and teas, wherein a panel of volunteer doctors, nurses and dietitians speak about cancer prevention, detection, nutrition and coping with the disease. They also hit on topics such as menopause, infertility, pregnancy and diabetes.
“We were trying to do seminars every three to four months,” says Renkoski, “but now almost every month we have a group.”
Most of LACE’s free public forums are held within the Inland Empire: the next one will be Jan. 15 at Kaiser Medical Building in Riverside.
Renkoski has included seminars on two cancer survivors’ cruises she sponsored to Ensenada and Vancouver. The youngest of 16 children, she has supportive siblings: one arranged a LACE tea in Huntington Beach; another in San Diego has planned a seminar for 50 women from her Jehovah’s Witness congregation.
“Ursula is remarkable,” says Laura Ward, LACE’s executive director and a registered nurse. “She wants to help others see that they can get through this and be OK.”
As one of LACE’s panelists, Ward, who coordinates the Breast Care Clinic at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Fontana, demonstrates how to do self-exams. “Women don’t pay enough attention to their bodies,” she says. “We teach them to look for signs and symptoms of cancer.”
The discussions are paying off in terms of early detection. After attending LACE lectures, says Ward, two women had mammograms and were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer.
As LACE’s resource person, she also provides a list of cancer support groups, free breast-cancer screening programs, and Medi-Cal and county contacts for poor women.
From the get-go, Renkoski says, her attitude was, “Sure, I have breast cancer. But I’m going to beat it.”
It was the same feistiness that got her through a hysterectomy after she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterine lining.
About nine months after that surgery, Renkoski started feeling exhausted all the time and developed a terrible pain under her right arm. Three months later, a mammogram showed nothing, although she felt a lump in her right breast. In another six months, the lump had grown to almost 3 inches. On July 17, 1997, a biopsy confirmed Renkoski’s fears: She had cancer that had spread to three lymph nodes.
Doctors removed the lump as well as those three diseased nodes, but not the breast. During the following 11 months, she was treated with radiation and chemotherapy. She also received physical therapy.
Although Renkoski’s hair fell out, she refused to let anyone — including her husband, Dan — see her bald, or without makeup. She slept in a cap and donned her wig in the closet. “Women would say, ‘You don’t look sick,’ ” Renkoski says proudly.
Even before she formed LACE, she began raising money for cancer research and staging seminars. The first was a tea she hosted for 32 women — friends, their friends and relatives who were cancer survivors — at her Nuevo home.
Her doctor, Dr. Edward S. Tyau, chief of surgery at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Riverside, talked about the latest techniques in treating cancer, reconstructive surgery and answered questions. It’s a role he has reprised many time as vice president of LACE and one of its seminar panelists.
Renkoski, who has been married almost 20 years and has no children, considers LACE her passion. She brings makeup artists to some seminars, finds wigs for indigent cancer patients, and spends hours in person or on the phone trying to advise and reassure frightened women.
“I love it,” she says. “And my husband is very supportive, even if I’m talking on the phone at 1 in the morning.”
Any group or club that wants to book a LACE panel or presenter, or anyone who wishes to consult Renkoski for help may call her at (909) 657-0613.
Cancer discussion
LACE Women’s Cancer Foundation and Amgen, Inc. will sponsor a panel discussion, “Ask the Experts on Cancer,” with questions from the audience.
Topics: The most asked questions about breast, uterine and ovarian cancer; the latest techniques in diagnosis and treatment; how to do proper self breast and uterine exams; how to provide moral support for sick loved ones; what to ask your doctor about biopsies, mammograms and physicals.
Who: Panelists are Dr. Edward Tyau, chief of general surgery at Kaiser Riverside; Dr. Colleen Wittenberg, assistant chief of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Kaiser Riverside; and Laura Ward, RN at the Breast Care Clinic at Kaiser Fontana; Barbara Badger, LVN at the Breast Cancer Clinic at Kaiser Riverside; and Christina Baer-Arter, an RN and Breast Care Clinic coordinator at Kaiser Riverside.
When: 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Jan. 15
Where: Kaiser Medical Building, 10800 Magnolia Ave., conference room A&B, Riverside
Fee: Free, open to the public.
Information: (909) 657-9537
Art: PHOTO; CHART
Caption: Ursula Basz Renkoski started Ladiaes Awareness for Cancer Education in April 1998.
Zone: ALL ZONES
Edition:
Section: HEALTH & FITNESS
Page#: C01
