Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
WWMN Interview: Roger Caplinger on the Seena Magowitz Foundation's Power of Us Fundraiser
Joining us is former Milwaukee Brewer's medical director, Roger Capplinger, and Roger, you've got an event coming up on Saturday, August 3rd as part of the Cina Maguets Foundations Fundraising. Tell us about that. Yeah, exciting time here in Milwaukee in conjunction with the Cina Maguets Foundation. We're having an actual weekend now of pancreatic cancer awareness, education, you know, Roger Maguets started this foundation after his mother's scene had passed away, has dedicated his life, others surrounding him, as well as myself and Jackie and our family. And the Milwaukee Brewers have been unbelievably gracious, you know, from Mr. Antanasio, to Rick Schlesinger, to Marty Ronsky, to all the people in my teammates at the Brewers have given me this platform to help build awareness. And so on Friday, the first Dr. Evans is having a medical symposium at the Medical College of Wisconsin with the far most leading experts in pancreatic cancer. Friday night, we're going to the Milwaukee Art Museum to have a get together, a kind of meet and greet, experience the Art Museum, which is a wonderful place to view our city. And then Saturday, we're having more patients and survivors, round table discussions with our physicians. We're touring the Medical College of Wisconsin Labs, where magic happens. We have one of the biggest tumor banks in the country. You know, we're having brunch with some of the physicians there that patients can talk to, both patients that are in treatment and patients like me that are out of treatment. And then we're having the dinner on the diamond as our finale. We're eating dinner on the field. The Brewers have been very gracious of allowing us to do that. And we're going to recognize, you know, Dr. Evans, Dr. von Hoff, some pancreatic cancer patients, as well as raise money for research. And the 100% of the proceeds from that, all those activities are going back to the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Laban Pancreatic Cancer Program. And this is the largest gathering ever of pancreatic patients and survivors that's ever taken place. Well, last year, we took a picture of all the survivors, and there was 80 of us in one room, the most ever. And this year, we're shooting for 120. And that's because the survival rates of pancreatic cancer, especially here at the Medical College of Wisconsin, are increasing. Those survival rates are almost triple the national average. And it's giving people hope. Absolutely. And if anybody wants to get more information, where can they go? Yeah, they can go to the cenomaguetsfoundation.org. It's all on the website. The Maguets Foundation has been aggressively promoting this. Thanks to you guys, Libby and WTMJ for having us on and promoting pancreatic cancer. In the state of Wisconsin, we have a high incident rate of that. And so we're trying to make people aware that they're not alone, right? And I think the nomenclature of the event is the power of us, right? We have power collectively.