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Business & Tech

It's Awareness Month for Homelessness and Pancreatic Cancer in Fridley

Wear a purple shirt in support of pancreatic cancer patients.

Do you know that November is Homelessness Awareness month and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month?

Yes, November is a month of awareness for both.

And to help Fridley citizens find out, Fridley Mayor Scott Lund made official city declarations supporting the campaigns last month before the city council.

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One declaration spoke of support for efforts to end homelessness by the Anoka County Continuum of Care and the Heading Home Anoka Education Committee.

The other document called for support of pancreatic cancer victims and the work of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and its affiliates in Fridley.

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Lund presented the cancer declaration to Cathy Grimm, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June 2010, and her daughter Elena Grimm.

Cathy Grimm told Lund and the city council that at her most recent, three-month check-up in September she learned “everything was clean and looking good.” She said after the meeing in a phone call she had surgery in September 2010.

Elena Grimm, 25, moved back to Minnesota from a newspaper job in Illinois to support her mother in her cancer fight, Cathy Grimm added Wednesday.

The declaration stated that pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest and the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths. Some 74 percent of pancreatic cancer patients die within a year of diagnosis while 94 percent die within the first five years.

The document said that in 2011, 43,030 persons will have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 37,600 will have died.

The declaration also said that by the time a person experiences symptoms, it’s too late for an optimistic prognosis. A council member asked what the symptoms were.

Cathy Grimm told the council she went in to her doctor with a stomachache that wouldn’t go away in her upper gastro-intestinal tract. She told Fridley Patch that her illness was caught early, in cancer stage 2. (Generally, stage 2 means the pancreatic cancer has spread to nearby organs and tissues, but not to lymph nodes.)

Grimm and her daughter wore purple t-shirts to the council meeting. Cathy told the members that purple is the color of the pancreatic cancer awareness effort.

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