Madison Marsh

I mean, one thing that I've seen at least over the past six years has been that rise in survival rate. Even though it's been slow, it has been a steady increase. And I think that gives me a lot of hope because I talked to Julie Fleshman, the CEO of Pan Can about this a lot.

What I always look towards is breast cancer, where they were 40 years ago, because that's kind of where pancreatic cancer is sitting now. 40 years ago, breast cancer was basically a death sentence. I mean, there wasn't high survival rates. There really wasn't anything going on in the field. And look at where it is now.

the money that's put into it, the research, the early detection avenues, the survival rate, how drastically it's increased.

That's the hope that I see for pancreatic cancer, because even though we're slow and steady right now, I think now that we've been able to break those first initial barriers to getting people to be more educated about it, to have more awareness, to get more researchers involved, I think that's only now opening up more and more doors to accelerate

One of the parts that I've really loved this year is whenever people get to come up and share some of their own stories with me and saying, oh, I heard you talking about this on the news.

And I want to tell you about a person that I loved and lost to pancreatic cancer, because even though it's not a community or a club you necessarily want to be a part of, I think the family that I've been able to gain from the pancreatic cancer world has been pretty incredible. And a moment that I've personally also really loved this year was at our race.

I've never had any survivors ever come to Whitney's race before and this year we had. Multiple, they had never met each other before and then ended up seeing on their T shirts saying survivor. So.

Them and their families and their spouses, they all walk together and there's this 1 photo of a survivor that I met and getting to hear his story of him walking across the finish line with his hand in the air. And I just think getting to see photos like that gives us a lot of hope for what we can achieve. And I know it's definitely shown to my volunteers, this is what we are working towards.

We want this guy's story to amplify and be like, just like every other patient. And that's been pretty incredible to get to see.

I mean, I would say if anyone's going to listen to any of the stories, they should go hear it right from the mouth. There are pages on PanCan's website of testimonies of survivors. Also on our page at the foundation, we run a newsletter every single month.

And that typically includes interviews either from survivors or family members and their stories and experiences with pancreatic cancer, because we want to remember everybody's story. We want to highlight those, give people hope, but also give people the opportunity to memorialize the people that they love. And so we have that on our page and on PanCan's page.

And I think reading through all of those stories always re-centers me to my passion, my purpose, and our mission towards a better future for all pancreatic cancer patients.

I wouldn't get to be Miss America without the Air Force's support in so many different ways. One, I wouldn't have been able to achieve this without the mentors at the Academy, without all the lessons that I had learned from the Air Force, but also kind of what you just mentioned about how they had helped me prepare for the opportunity.

I remember after I, even going to prepare for Miss Colorado, I was talking to my commanders about that to make sure I had all the tools and resources to make sure that everybody was aware of what we were getting into. And then afterwards, preparing them for Miss America to come up with some sort of mock plan of what we would want my year to look like so that it would be worth our time.

We could get all the use out of it for what the Air Force needed to me and to ensure that I'm still meeting the standards as an officer. Because I also made it clear to them that Yes, this is my side passion, obviously, but the Air Force comes first because I made a promise to serve, sign my name on that dotted line, and that was my duty and my mission first above all else.

So if the pageant wasn't going to be able to fit into it, then I would have turned down the opportunity, gone back to school, and gone back into my service. But luckily, the Air Force did see the value and this opportunity and the types of recruiting that we could change the mission force. So we had spoken about it in the months beforehand. Lots of people got involved.

And then after I won, I called the lawyers and the air force to let them know that what we had been preparing for actually happened and let my commanders know. And they quickly got to work with all of the people at the Pentagon.

And my congressman, I believe, ended up giving a call to the Secretary of the Air Force to talk about what this could look like and the impact that we could have if they kept me on active duty. So I'm really lucky that they did, because the Air Force has truly taken care of me so much this year.

And I know my new commanders that have taken on this position to lead me through the Miss America process have really taken me in like family and had always made sure that above all else, they were able to put my well-being first.

And I think that has meant a tremendous amount to me now recognizing the impact that it's had and how I can carry that into when I get to lead people again after this year is over.