‘It’s like Vegas, whatever is said there stays there’
A new support group has formed on P.E.I. for people diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and Noreen Murphy, of Kingston, P.E.I., helped bring it all together.
At first, Murphy said there was a Facebook group that was used to organize group meetings for people like herself throughout the year.
She found they weren’t getting together enough and that a lot of the conversations were still happening at the treatment centre.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of cancer you have, you’re just all going through the same thing,” she told CBC’s Island Morning.
“From emotional support to different things in your life, we wanted to be able to talk about these things outside of the cancer treatment centre.… I know this is the age of social media, but we like the one-on-one, face-to-face type of conversation.”
That’s when the Canadian Cancer Society provided one of their boardrooms so Murphy and others could meet.
Currently, they meet every third Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Canadian Cancer Society office in downtown Charlottetown.
The support group is open to those diagnosed with cancer, family, friends, caregivers and whoever “you need to feel comfortable.”
“It’s like Vegas, whatever is said there stays there,” she said.
‘Sometimes you just need a little bit more’
Murphy was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, and, in 2016, she was also diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.
It took me about a year to wrap my head around this.
— Noreen Murphy
For a while, Murphy struggled to really grasp what was happening to her.
“It takes time to wrap your mind around it. It’s very overwhelming,” she said.
“It almost feels sometimes like everything’s coming down at once upon yourself and it takes time to sift through your mind, your fears, your questions. It took me about a year to wrap my head around this.”
Murphy said while service provided by the cancer treatment centre is “wonderful,” the support group gives her and others the comfort of hearing from each other outside of the facility.
“Sometimes you just need a little bit more. To talk to somebody who is also going through the same thing you are saying ‘me too’ just gives you that … little extra comfort,” she said.
