Joan Lunden encourages vigilance, healthy living, at Journey Gala Saturday

More than 500 people gathered Saturday for the fourth Journey Gala benefiting the SoutheastHEALTH Foundation, ready for a “soiree in Paris” with celebrity guest Joan Lunden, former “Good Morning America” co-host, bestselling author, and women’s health and wellness advocate.

The cancer fund is important to the Cancer Center’s work, said Shauna Hoffman, vice president of marketing and business development at SoutheastHEALTH.

“Every week, we pull from that fund, and it works,” she said.

After predinner entertainment by Lady Lack Entertainment Dancers, Southeast-

HEALTH CEO Ken Bateman took the stage.

He said with Saturday’s efforts, the foundation had raised more than $1 million since the Journey Gala began.

Last year, the gala raised more than $250,000, he said, and each year, the foundation has helped more than 3,000 patients and their families with direct patient care, pharmacy assistance and more.

Lunden, herself a survivor of an aggressive form of breast cancer, said the importance of sharing stories is, others can learn and be motivated to be more vigilant about their health care.

“To be honest, I didn’t think that it would happen to me,” Lunden said. “I’ve been doing countless interviews with experts. I always reported on the latest stats. A woman has a one in eight chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime. I just never thought that I was going to be that one — because I didn’t have breast cancer in my family history.”

Less than 15% of women diagnosed with breast cancer have a family history of the disease, she said.

And there were other risk factors she didn’t know about: lifestyle choices, poor diet, stress, not enough sleep, excess weight after menopause, having children later in life, having had fertility treatments — all of which she had.

There was another factor: dense breast tissue.

Lunden said more than half of women in the United States have dense breast tissue, but patients don’t always know whether they have it.

A tumor shows up white on mammograms, even 3D ones, Lunden said, the same as dense tissue.

So, she said, after she interviewed an expert for a show she was hosting, she had an ultrasound added to her yearly exam.

“I shudder to think where my story might have gone, 18 to 24 months later, if I hadn’t had that ancillary test that day. Early detection can save your life. It certainly saved mine,” Lunden said.

Lunden said yes, there is concern in the medical community too many screenings can lead to false positives, but “from my point of view. I’d rather have a false positive any day, than not knowing that I had an aggressive tumor growing inside me. We can’t be afraid of answers.”

Lunden’s father was a cancer surgeon in the 1960s, she said, and growing up, she was determined to carry on his legacy.

She quickly learned the medical field was not for her, but, she said, “soon after my cancer diagnosis, it occurred to me that having been in all your living rooms and bedrooms for two decades every morning on ‘Good Morning America,’ I now might have the ability to actually make an impact on people’s health in a significant way.”

Lunden encouraged everyone to be more vigilant about their health, not just for early detection but for readiness to handle treatment.

“My doctors told me that one of the reasons I did so well, going through all that chemo and radiation, was being as healthy as I was going into that,” Lunden said.

Paying it forward helps keep her going, flying all over the country to events such as Saturday’s gala, she said.

“It is with your support that SoutheastHEALTH is able to help other patients battling cancer in your area, so that they too can expect a good ending to their story,” Lunden said.