Editor’s note: Each Friday in October, The Dispatch will publish an article centered on breast cancer awareness.
On the first Thursday of every month, Josephine Ward goes to OCH Regional Medical Center in Starkville and spends an hour with people like her.
Ward was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 22, 2014. Soon after, she joined a cancer support group that met at OCH. Two years and two biopsies later, she’s cancer free. But she still attends the meetings.
She remembers how she felt after her diagnosis and how being around others battling breast cancer helped her.
“I was so negative, I needed the positive environment,” she said.
Ada Williams started the group in 2011. An ovarian cancer survivor, she was diagnosed in 2008 and remembers feeling like she couldn’t talk to her family about everything she was going through.
Instead she reached out to Marie Mason, a friend from her church who was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1990s. Mason attended several support groups in the intervening years and knows the value of talking to people who have gone or are going through the same things she did.
“It was just good to talk to somebody who knew what you were talking about,” Williams said.
So on Sept. 1, 2011, the group had its first meeting. It was open to anyone in the Starkville area.
At first there were seven members, Williams said. Now there are more than 20 cancer patients, survivors, caregivers and people who come to offer support and learn more about the disease.
Six of the members have battled breast cancer. Their experiences vary – Betty Brooks, who joined the group in 2012, went through about six weeks of radiation treatment at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle in Columbus. Cynthia Davis, on the other hand, had six weeks of radiation plus six months of chemotherapy. They share their experiences with each other, with people still battling breast cancer and with survivors of other types of cancer.
“It helps to talk,” Brooks said.
For breast cancer survivors in particular, the group is kind of a “sisterhood thing,” Mason said. She refers to Ward as her “bosom buddy” because they’ve both had biopsies.
Only about 15 members make it to meetings regularly, Williams said. Patients just starting treatment usually don’t feel up to going anywhere.
“Your immune system goes through a lot,” Davis said.
It’s one of the many things members talk about when they get together – how they felt, how they coped with those feelings and making suggestions for others now going through the same thing.
For instance, Mason recommends lemon drops to people who have problems with nausea and pickles for those who can’t get rid of the taste chemo leaves in their mouth. But pickles didn’t help Davis, who recommends hot foods instead.
The group also hosts guest speakers and attends retreats at Camp Bluebird, a camp in Tishomingo County which services cancer survivors.
Mostly though the members are just there for each other, Brooks said
“That’s very important, to be around supportive people, to be around positive people,” she said. “It really helps.”
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