03-04-2025
KC Cancer survivor heading to D.C. to fight for research funding
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City cancer survivor is heading to Washington D.C. next week to meet with lawmakers. She's fighting for research funding and access to life-saving medications.
Patt Papenfuhs considers herself lucky to have had early detection, responding to a flyer in the mail about body scans.
'It came back clean except for the little spot in my lung, and that's how it started,' Papenfuhs said.
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After it calcified, she began chemo in October of 2023 and had surgery in 2024 to remove the lower lobe of her right lung. She'll be on a medication for the next three years that started out just as a general cancer drug.
'The more they studied it and the more research they realized that this drug targeted the gene mutation I have,' she said.
After that, the future is unclear. She'll be one of the more than one million Missouri residents living with lung disease.
'If lung cancer comes back, it tends to migrate to the brain, so I'm hoping there's more research going forward. So that if and when it comes back and this drug doesn't work, I have a next step.'
She'll head to Washington D.C. next week to speak to Missouri's Senators and her congressman Sam Graves or their staff, along with more than 40 other lung force heroes as part of the American Lung Association's Advocacy Day on April 9.
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Tuesday, mass layoffs began in the Department of Health and Human Services, which contains both the CDC and National of Institute of Health, which participate in cancer research.
'I think it's a concern for anyone who has lung cancer, any kind of cancer or any type of illness that's chronic because research is what we are all counting on,' Papenfuhs said.
Convincing Missouri's Republican delegation to try to curb CDC NIH or Medicaid cuts could be an uphill climb. But that's something the lung cancer survivor is used to, now quite literally.
Exactly one month ago and a year removed from her surgery, the 72-year-old completed her first Fight for Air Climb, climbing 42 floors to the top of Kansas City's tallest building.
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