Terramar Vice President of Global Engagement Kate Patay and keynote speaker and Valuegraphics Research Company founder David Allison share their cancer survival story and how their experience shaped how they view their world personally and professionally.
Lessons from two cancer journey stories that required event prof superpowers
We talk a lot about the importance of taking care of our health in the midst of busy planner lives, usually just before we jump on a red eye and spend a week grazing leftover cheese boards and eating out of vending machines. But actively fighting for our care can be a life-or-death decision. Regular checkups are not optional as demonstrated by the two stories that follow.
Thank you to the brave leaders who agreed to be vulnerable about their personal journeys in hopes that at least one other event prof will take the time between site inspections to schedule a checkup rather than ignoring the signs until it is too late.
A Lesson in Self-Care
When Terramar Vice President of Global Engagement Kate Patay found a lump on her chest while at the company’s annual sales meeting in Los Cabos, she thought it was odd but didn’t worry about it. When she returned, she casually mentioned it to her husband and he continued to ask her about it until she made an appointment to have it checked. “I realized I was being selfish by not taking action,” she said. “We take care of other people, whether 50 or 500 and we can’t do that well if we’re not taking care of ourselves, it’s selfish of me to not put myself first.” That is when she made the call.
The initial appointment occurred almost a month later because of travel and a lack of urgency since she had been in for a mammogram that came back clear four months earlier. When she made it onto the paper-lined table, the doctor confirmed her suspicion but had to refer her to a specialist for an appointment that happened a month later. That led to more appointments and scans. “You hear about getting called into the room and the doctor was so kind, but she said very clearly that what she saw was concerning and after all this time, she did not want me to wait.”
“The talk” happened on a Friday afternoon. The biopsy followed on Monday morning and that afternoon Patay was on a rescheduled overnight flight to Chicago bandaged up, unable to lift any of her bags. The news of an invasive ductal carcinoma came just before she walked into a room full of friends and planners. “It was isolating and lonely because I was trying to digest what I was reading and didn’t want to fall down a Google rabbit hole before I heard it from a professional,” she said.
Patay compartmentalized and tucked the news away while she worked. Even after it was confirmed, she didn’t come home right away because there was nothing that could be done and she didn’t want to be sad at home alone. Once she told her husband, he became the self-appointed protector-in-chief. But she decided to keep the knowledge close, family and close friends because she wanted to save everyone else from worrying.
The good news is that Patay was in early stage one and it had not yet spread to her lymph nodes. But an MRI revealed the presence of a second lump so instead of the lumpectomy initially planned, she opted for a double mastectomy. Breast cancer is a disease that runs in Patay’s family. Four relatives have been diagnosed with the same disease at the same age so she understood the implications.
That history made what happened even more painful. Even with the extreme measures, post-operation imaging showed that the mass had been left behind. She had to go in for a second emergency surgery that left her scarred, weak and in pain for months. She was having spasms in her hand and difficulty moving her arm and her doctors didn’t seemed to be listening to her. “It was so devastating. I made guttural sounds I had never heard before,” she said.
Patay was determined to get better. She did her research to find the best surgeon to get her back to functioning and when told she would have to wait until March of 2026 for an appointment, she politely asked if she could call each week checking to see if there had been a cancellation. In the meantime, her husband was traveling with her—including to a Smart Meetings Incentive Experience in the Bahamas—to carry her bags. “I was persistent. I didn’t want to keep carrying this heavy burden,” she said.
Patay’s notes and calls did not go unanswered. On a Thursday in September, she was told there was an appointment the following Wednesday in Las Vegas and her team jumped into action, changing calendars, finding a place for her to sleep and making arrangements to stay with her.
“If I wasn’t a planner, I probably wouldn’t have had those tools available to me and be so well trained in taking what information you’re given at the time and making the best possible decision with the information presented to you,” Patay reflected five months later as she was just getting back to full mobility.
What was most difficult was the change of roles. “I’m the fixer. I’m the helper in my world and I had to ask for help. I had to raise my hand and say, ‘Can you please help me?’ and be vulnerable,” she recalled.
In the next breath she smiled and said, “Everyone came through. I’m so grateful.”
Now that the worst is in the rear view, Patay wanted to tell her story to encourage other meeting professionals to take responsibility for their health. “I have always told people you do have to take care of yourself first. I can’t imagine what this conversation would have been if I had put my care off six months, or even the nine months or so until I would have had another mammogram,” she mused.
Patay urged planners to go with their gut because it’s usually not wrong. “If something doesn’t feel right, poke at that to see why.”
In Praise of Personal Risk Management
Don’t let embarrassment get in the way of a long life. That is the message keynote speaker and Valuegraphics Research Company founder David Allison is trying to get out. From stage, he talks about understanding people based on what matters to them, not on demographics such as age, gender or ethnicity. But last year, he got a personal lesson in how valuable health is at any age.
He noticed that something wasn’t right and went to the doctor for a series of tests that can feel invasive but can also be lifesaving. “It’s embarrassing for guys to talk about their stuff and we don’t want to doctors poking at us. It’s humbling,” he said.
Sure enough, a blood test revealed his prostate-specific antigens (PSAs) were elevated, indicating the possibility of prostate cancer and surgery was quickly prescribed.
That was when he realized that enormity of the global problem and the simplicity of the solution. “Some 400,000 men a year globally still die from prostate cancer and yet it’s 99.9% treatable if you catch it early,” he reported. “We’re losing husbands, fathers, sons, nephews, cousins, just because they didn’t get tested. I want to scream it from the rooftops.”
While Allison acted quickly and radical prostatectomy removed all signs of the disease with no need for chemo or radiation, it changed him in profound ways.
“It was a good lesson in acceptance,” said Allison, who has prided himself on taking the time to stay fit over the years. “A lot of emotional work was required beyond the operation.”
Speaking from his home in Vancouver, Canada, Allison explained that he just turned 60 and realized that having his “plumbing” temporarily not working may have been a preview of what is to come. “Physical structures crumble, like everything on the planet does and moments like this are a reminder of your own inevitable decline,” he said.
But Allison was adamant that men not wait until the fifth or sixth decade to start getting tested. “Cancer doesn’t know how old you are,” he said. An annual blood test could make all the difference.
He noted that while risk assessment and backup plans for events are a planner superpower, they don’t take into consideration that they need to do the same for themselves. “If you go down the week before an event, then that event is going to struggle,” he said.
“We have a responsibility to the people around us, to our businesses, the people we employ, to the clients expecting us to show up to be healthy and well and fit,” he says to himself on those days when going to the gym doesn’t sound fun. “I go for them, because it’s part of the job, it’s not extra.”
Similarly, he framed taking time to relax as part of the work. Go for a walk, fix a healthy meal, get a good night’s sleep, take the vacation after a big event. That will power you to get through all the rest of the work.
