I made the decision to start a Cancer support group at my office a few weeks ago. I will be speaking with HR about it this afternoon. I've downloaded a metric crap ton of information from the web. The ACA is great and there is a book on starting your support groups for cancer. We have over 2000 people at my company, and I thought it I could help just one person, that would be great.
We already have a PRIDE group, and I attended that meeting today. I'm only an ally, but the goal is for everyone to be able to be comfortable at work. JMT is an excellent company to work for, and we all work hard to show compassion to our co-workers.
My goal is to provide a resource for my co-workers going through cancer or supporting family or friends going through cancer. I was clueless when I started my cancer journey. I'll update this after my call.
My meeting with HR went great, but she asked that we open this up to other conditions as well. We have a lot of people in the company who may have something other than cancer going on that they may have experience or questions. I'm thinking Cancer, but others may have experience with Alzheimer's, Elder Care, Autism, MS, Diabetes, Disabilities, physical or learning, surviving losing someone to suicide, etc. There is probably someone who has experience who could be a resource to answer questions, listen to someone who just needs an ear, or can say, I know someone who has been through it, I can give an introduction. Google only goes so far. I do have some experience with Alzheimer's disease but hesitate as my experience may not be as helpful as I would like.
I'm starting to get excited and terrified about putting a group together. There will be a chat feature where a co-worker could post to the group, does anyone have experience with xyz? The query goes to the teams' group, and anyone can be linked to someone with that experience. We can publish a list of resources which will grow as the group matures. We shall see how this may go. My biggest worry though is that people respect everyone's privacy. People who approach our group don't want everyone to know what is happening in their life. Privacy must be paramount.
I think this is why I would like to limit the group to Cancer in the beginning. If there are people interested in other issues, those can be added. I think starting too big in the beginning would be extremely difficult to maintain.
I am open to suggestions at this point. Does anyone out there have any experience in starting something like this?
Wow, this was really old. I just found it in my drafts. Currently I am 13+ years cancer free. I'll be 14 years Cancer free October 24th
Old post:
It will be 4 years October 24th. It feels really nice being that close to a milestone. Only one more year until I get to be considered 'Cured' and can give blood again. There is still that nagging in the back of my mind which occasionally worries about another re-occurrence of the disease. I even got Great News from my brother about Dad's cancer prognosis. His Doctors have declared him done with cancer. Dad is close to 80 and was lucky enough to have a very slow growing variety of pancreatic cancer. His doctors believe it will be another 20 years or more before it becomes a problem again. Dad really doesn't like doctors so I am quite sure that made him happy. Now we just need to get him in to see a neurologist for an evaluation after last year's stroke.
Mom has further declined. Alzheimer's is a dastardly disease. Lewy Body Dementia just makes it that much worse.
Other than that I am back to my very bad habit of working too many hours again. It is incredibly easy to fall back into that habit.
Sorry all, I thought I posted this way back when. I haven't logged into my blog in several years. I'll just leave this here.
