FAYETTEVILLE — Kristen Madsen would have been the ideal person to plan the fundraiser in her name.
Madsen was a lot of fun, says her mother, Jo Ann Johnson of Fayetteville, but also someone who was organized and knew how to get tasks accomplished. Were she still alive, she would have eagerly taken the reins when it came time to plan the first Kristen J. Madsen Wig Out to Defeat Ovarian Cancer.
The fundraiser will be at 6 p.m. Aug. 28, at HighlandsOncology Group in Rogers.
“I just want it to be fun,” Johnson says. “If Kristen were here, she’d want it to be fun, because she was a fun person, and she would have done a much better job than I’m doing. She was one to get in there and get things done.”
Madsen, a Fayetteville resident and member of the Wal-Mart vendor community, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in April 2008. She died in January 2009, a month before her 40th birthday.
She left behind a husband and two sons, ages 18 and 3 at the time.
“[We] never gave up,” Johnson says. “There were times when she would say, ‘Mom, I think this is going to kill me,’ and I’d say, ‘No, they are going to come up with a cure.’ I believed it.
“It didn’t happen with Kristen, but that’s what I want for other mothers, sisters and friends - to have that cure.”
Madsen, then 38 years old, was a healthy person who began having pain just three weeks before she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer known as clear-cell carcinoma.
Her doctor initially thought the pain was related to her reproductive system, and since Madsen didn’t want to have any more children, a hysterectomy was scheduled. The cancer was detected during the surgery.
Part of the difficulty in diagnosing ovarian cancer, Johnson says, is that the disease is not as well understood as other forms of cancer. For example, there is no equivalent of a pap smear, a test that can detect cervical cancer early, for ovarian cancer.
Johnson describes ovarian cancer as “a silent killer, like hypertension.” Getting information about the disease into women’s hands is important to her, which is why there will be all sorts of material at Wig Out about the symptoms andtreatment.
“I have a real passion for promoting the awareness and getting women to the doctor,” Johnson says. “There are slower-growing [forms of] ovariancancer that, if they catch early, they can treat them for a long time.”
For roughly a year and a half, Johnson has been selling bracelets for $5 apiece to raise money for research and patient support services at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute in Little Rock.
Nearly $2,000 has been generated through bracelet sales, but she wanted to do something bigger. She said she had been “too emotional” to plan an event previously, but that by this spring, she was ready to start working on Wig Out.
She says she has had a lot of help from friends of her and her daughter, as well as the staff at UAMS. Wig Out will feature hors d’oeuvres, music and the popular dicestyle game “Pass the Pig.”
Tickets are $50 each. Johnson says she hopes to draw more than 200 people, and make the event an annual affair - until a cure for ovarian cancer is found.
“I want her boys to lookback and say, ‘My mom’s life did make a difference - not only with us, but even in her death, her life made a difference,’” Johnson says. “I want something at UAMS in her memory.” For more information about theKristen J. Madsen Wig Out to Defeat Ovarian Cancer, call (501) 526-2277 or visit
wigout2012. eventbrite.com
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Northwest Profile, Pages 31 on 08/12/2012