Community support was immediate for Chatham-Kent councilor Melissa Harrigan when she went public with her battle with breast cancer and now it’s gone to another level.
Orders for T-shirts with the slogan ‘Her fight is our fight’ are pouring in for a fundraiser Lynn and Mark Authier, owners of Authier Print & Promotional, are undertaking to assist Harrigan in raising awareness for breast cancer.
Harrigan, 35, who announced in mid-December she is undergoing treatment for invasive ductal carcinoma, said the fundraiser grew organically. Initially, she asked the Authiers to print some T-shirts with the slogan for close family members to wear during her chemotherapy treatments.
She added since the COVID-19 pandemic began, patients go alone into the chemotherapy suites, “so it’s just a nice way for them to send me a selfie and for us to stay connected while I’m doing my treatment.”
Harrigan said her husband Kris and son Jack wore the T-shirt to a hockey practice and people began asking how they could get one.
She added Lynn Authier also called to say there were public inquiries about the T-shirts and the couple wanted to do a fundraiser, “which was just awesome.”
Saturday morning Lynn Authier was busy going through numerous email orders that had come in overnight since Harrigan had tweeted about the fundraiser on Friday. She hadn’t had a chance to get an exact total, but estimated at least 50 or 60 more orders had come in overnight.
The $20 T-shirts can be ordered by emailing [email protected].
“It’s certainly got a bit more attention than I think Lynn or I would have expected, but that’s a great thing,” Harrigan said.
The Authiers were happy to take on the fundraiser for the mother of three, who is active in the community, including coaching soccer.
“Mel’s been a family friend for a long time, we’ve known her since she was kid,” Lynn Authier said.
She added her husband Mark and Harrigan previously served together on Chatham-Kent Council as the two representatives for West Kent, which made their friendship closer.
“We just want to help her out,” Authier said. “She’s a great person and she does a lot for the community, too, and we just wanted to be able to give back somehow.”
The Authiers are no strangers to doing fundraisers to help the community, including those battling cancer.
“We like to do it for people we know and people we care about,” Authier said.
Harrigan, who has taken to social media to share her cancer journey, said the community response is “absolutely incredible and humbling, and really encouraging to see how much positive support that I’ve been given.”
She said it has gone beyond family and friends, to include fellow employees, council colleagues and the community at-large, especially women.
“I’ve had lots of women in Chatham-Kent reach out to me to share with me their own breast cancer stories of survivorship and that’s been amazing as well.”
Harrigan plans to have the proceeds raised from the T-shirt fundraiser go to local health care needs. She has started a conversation with the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance Foundation with an interest in supporting the diagnostic imaging department and women’s health generally.
Harrigan said one of the many things she’s learned through her cancer journey is a breast cancer diagnosis comes from more than a mammogram.
“You get ultrasounds and biopsies and then you do CT scans and MRIs and nuclear medicine scans for staging, and all of that happens in the diagnostic imaging department and the breast clinic at CKHA,” she said.
And expect to see Harrigan share more about her journey through social media as her chemotherapy sessions continue into April.
“I think the more public I am and the more that women see young women going through breast cancer treatment, it makes it more real,” she said. “It helps to bring awareness to the importance of self-screening and mammograms.”