When Seth Hadlow’s grandmother was growing up, she made a simple promise to her father never to try even a single cigarette before turning 21. On her 21st birthday, she finally tried one and immediately swore them off for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, she was diagnosed with lung cancer when Hadlow was still a young boy.
Winner of the Pintas & Mullins Breathing for Tomorrow Scholarship, Hadlow wrote about how an experimental drug named Tarceva gave his grandmother an additional eight years of life after her diagnosis. As a college student at the University of Missouri who plans to become a journalist, Hadlow aims to bring similar news of hope and new medications to those affected by lung cancer in the future.
“No one deserves to wither away like that,” he wrote. “It seems especially unfair that a woman who spent her life caring for others as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, grandmother, and teacher would suffer such a fate.”
“Journalism had a big hand in getting [Tarceva] promoted,” Hadlow said in an interview with Pintas & Mullins representatives. As such, he believes his interest in journalism can dovetail with providing assistance and breaking news to people who need such life-changing drugs.
The link between these two seemingly disparate concepts, medicine and journalism, is not as wide a gulf as it might seem. As Hadlow pointed out in the essay that won him the $2,500 scholarship award, “In the field, a journalist can be the connection between the patient and a remedy.”
What better way to honor his late grandmother’s legacy than by providing that necessary connection?
About the Pintas & Mullins Breathing for Tomorrow Scholarship
The attorneys at Pintas & Mullins help clients with personal injury claims ranging from medical malpractice to car accidents, environmental claims to defective product claims. They have assisted clients who have suffered a range of injuries and harm, including lung cancer, and are familiar with the devastation this disease can wreak.
That is why they created the Pintas & Mullins Breathing for Tomorrow Scholarship. As the winner, Seth Hadlow represents the spirit of channeling inner grief into productive work to help others affected by cancer. We wish him luck in his journalism career and know that the $2,500 scholarship he earned is a testament to his dedication for helping others.
