JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — "I'm a special kind of clumsy," Kasey Wagner says with a big smile. "It's a ridiculous story."
It is a bit crazy. It starts with the Jaguars then goes to the Jax Icemen and then to five broken bones and then to Buddy Check 12.
Let's start with football.
Wagner says she and her fiancé are huge football fans. During the Jaguar's playoff game against the Chargers, Wagner says she was at home watching ---- very excited, as the rest of the Jag nation was.
"Once they scored, I jumped up and, when I went down, my ankles rolled. I landed on the outside of both of my feet," Wagner says.
She says x-rays showed five broken bones in her feet.
But she toughed it out, despite the pain. She even continued to talk with her clients about their cases while she was set in casts.
"I have 25 screws and five plates and some rods," she says.
Wagner is an attorney for Baggett Law, a personal injury firm with an office in Nocatee.
Next up, the Jax Icemen hockey team. Wagner went to see a game and came in her wheelchair to the First Coast News Buddy Check table. It was Cancer Survivors' Night at the game, and the topic of catching breast cancer early was on everyone's mind.
Wagner listened to the push for the Buddy Bus, First Coast News' new mobile mammography unit with Baptist/MD Anderson.
And that takes us from hockey to Buddy Check.
"I had met you and seen your set-up with Buddy Check at the game," Wagner says. "Before I was out of the wheelchair, I had scheduled my first mammogram."
Good for her. And not just good, excellent.
Mammograms on the Buddy Bus can detect cancers as tiny as grains of sand. The cure rate can be 98%.
Now Wagner is talking with the other women at Baggett Law.
"We're going to be each other's buddies. We'll check on every 12th of the month," Wagner says.
The co-owner of Baggett Law, Amanda Baggett, is 100% behind the effort to bring early detection to her firm and to women working in their Nocatee area. In fact, she's planning to bring the Buddy Bus to her vicinity during this winter and invite women to come get mammograms.
"I think it's critical," Baggett says.
Wagner is now finished with physical therapy and walking, as if nothing ever went wrong. She is tough. She's a mom of twins, and that takes a special kind of energy.
It also takes realizing that your family needs you alive. So hats off to her for getting her mammogram and doing her self exams for Buddy Check
Of course, bummer for the broken bones. But applause for Wagner working now to save other women's lives.
If you want the Buddy Bus to come to your parking lot, just go to baptistjax.com/buddy and sign up.
