chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
CHAPEL HILL -- Being a doctor, having a wife and two kids and playing in a rock band is "ridiculously time-consuming," said John Boggess, whose profession is associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UNC and Rex Hospital but whose passion comes from playing in the rock band N.E.D., which stands for "No Evidence of Disease."
But the extra hours are rewarding for him when he sees his 11-year-old daughter's girlfriends download his songs onto their iPods, and his patients cry when they hear his recordings.
Boggess recalls an incident with a patient he treated for several years.
Maria had her chemotherapy that day. Boggess gave her his iPod and said, "Check this out." Those were rough mixes of N.E.D.'s recordings, he said.
"She listened to it through her chemo, and she came in, and she was just crying her eyes out, and she absolutely loved it," Boggess said.
Maria, who has since succumbed to her disease, and her husband supported the band. She dedicated the money she had put off for her funeral to the band.
Women's lives don't end when they get cancer, the doctor said. Boggess and his band want to show women that cancer is not scary, but it is an opportunity to discover what really matters in their lives, and connect to "what is it that gets them out of bed every morning."
When you hear the word "cancer," it brings you to the state of fear and panic, and loss of control, Boggess said. "And really, it's a variation of body function."
Eighty thousand women get invasive juvenile cancer a year -- about 160,000 get breast cancer, most of which is not invasive, Boggess said. But juvenile cancer doesn't get as much attention, "there are no resources to see improvement in research, and there's no awareness attached."
Juvenile cancer affects mostly young adults -- ages 15 to 30 with 220-250 cases per million youths (annonc.oxfordjournals.org).
The survival rate now is more than 75 percent with breast cancer, and about 15 percent with invasive juvenile cancer, Boggess said. About 40,000 women die of juvenile cancer a year in the United States.
N.E.D. creates art, through which it helps women financially and emotionally, Boggess said. And the band members have fun with it.
