The Women’s Cancer Resource Center offers survivors practical help and a vibrant sense of community.
After her second cancer diagnosis, Jewel Irving spent her days sitting on the floor in a dark corner of her home. “I came out of the hospital in a depressed state,” says the 56-year-old Oakland resident. “My house became a tomb.”
Irving describes her initial diagnosis with breast cancer in 2001 as something she went through all alone. No one helped her remove the bandage that covered her double mastectomy or drain the fluid from tubes that looked to her like grenades. “I was scared to even see myself,” she says, and managed to unwrap the bandage only after lighting candles and meditating. Five months later, she learned that she had precancerous cells in her uterus and would need a total hysterectomy. “I just wanted to disappear,” she says.
Today, Irving is smiling and upbeat. Seated on a sofa at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center (WCRC) in Oakland, she wears a sleeveless white dress that sets off her glowing skin. A black turban covers her hair, and her wrists are adorned with beaded bracelets. “I wish I’d found out earlier about the Center,” she says. “It opened up a whole new life for me.”
From its inception in 1986 as an answering machine in someone’s living room, the Center has worked to meet the complex needs of women with cancer. In the early days, a committee of 20 volunteers took turns answering questions left on the machine—usually from newly diagnosed women seeking guidance or support.
Today, eight staff members, along with 85 volunteers, stand behind the organization. Housed in an inviting, well-maintained one-story building on Telegraph Avenue, the Center features an extensive resource and lending library, a cozy room for support group meetings, and brightly painted walls in shades like buttery yellow and raspberry. “We were determined to create a setting that felt celebratory and life-affirming,” says Executive Director Peggy McGuire, who has led the organization since 2005. Each year, about 5,000 Bay Area women use the Center’s services, which are free and available to all women with cancer.
The original answering machine is no more. Volunteers now staff an information and referral help line, fielding questions that range from “My doctor said I have a lesion on my cervix—what does that mean?” to “Do you know of a low-cost place I can stay when I visit my sister in the hospital?” Help line volunteers also contact clients regularly just to check in. Other services include support groups; in-home help; books and articles in English and Spanish; referrals for food, transportation, and housing; cooking and nutrition classes; yoga; writing and crafts workshops; and an art gallery. Although local hospitals, including Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of California at San Francisco also offer complementary services—support groups, yoga, meditation, and the like—the Center differs from these institutions in its primary purpose. WCRC isn’t a medical treatment facility—its mission is one of personal empowerment and community building, including outreach to underserved women. “We keep trying to see what works and what services there’s a need for,” says Community Outreach Manager Margo Rivera-Weiss, who recently set up workshops on holistic and nutritional approaches to attain restful sleep.
By the time Irving discovered the Center in 2007, she had lost both her job and her home—a tragic but not uncommon side effect of serious illness. “I came here figuring that nobody could tell me anything,” she says, “but I was turned around. I came here and cried and felt like a fool, but they opened their hearts.” At the Center, she received the computer access she needed to update her résumé and search for a new job. An afterschool program hired her, and she found an apartment she could afford. Staff helped her to secure donations of food, towels, and dishes. “We’re seeing the issues of poverty and how they compound the experience of anyone facing cancer,” says McGuire, who runs the Center with a funding mix of individual donations and foundation grants. “More and more, we’re reaching the women other organizations can’t deal with because of the complexity of their circumstances.”
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On a Wednesday morning in July, Merry Montgomery, a slender woman in her 60s, is at the Center preparing reports and making calls to clients. Like Irving, Montgomery had no one to help her through cancer treatment. “I was alone for the biggest fight of my life,” she says. Now she volunteers to help other women obtain the support she didn’t have. Montgomery is a Community Health Advocate, part of a WCRC program that trains African-American cancer survivors to reach out within their own communities. (For Spanish-speaking clients, the WCRC offers similar services through the Comadres program.) Recently, Montgomery hosted an early-detection presentation at the church she attends, using a rubber model to show women how to do their own breast exams. She handed out information about free screening tests and urged women to overcome the fear and embarrassment that keeps them away from the doctor’s office. “By training women to teach other women, we create a powerful multiplier effect in the community,” McGuire says.
Montgomery also accompanies women to doctors’ appointments and helps them navigate the medical system. She recalls a client with “a tumor the size of a seven-month fetus,” who had been too fearful to have it checked out. “She had grown up in a military family and was afraid to question authority,” Montgomery says. “She allowed me to go with her and to ask the doctor what was really going on so she would understand.”
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As Wednesday morning rolls into afternoon, Montgomery remains at her desk, while six women set out yoga mats and props along the wood floor in the Center’s spacious library. Yoga is a weekly event at the Center, taught by a rotating group of teachers. Today, nurse and yoga instructor Bonnie Maeda, who started the class two years ago, leads the group through gentle seated and standing postures. “I do this to help women feel better about themselves,” says Maeda, who adapts the poses to meet each person’s physical abilities.
Once a month, Wednesday also brings the popular Cooking Club, an evening cooking and nutrition class taught by chef and nutrition consultant Sandy Der. For the July session on fermented foods, 40 people gather in the library, now free of mats and women in ancient Indian poses. Several of the attendees are men: many of the Center’s programs are open not only to clients and volunteers, but to the general public as space allows. Der, a trim woman with an easy smile, discusses the health benefits of fermented foods, meanwhile whipping up a huge jar of sauerkraut, two quarts of kombucha tea, and some kimchi for all to sample. As people chat over sips of tea and bites of cabbage, Der encourages everyone to come back next month for a session on foods of West Africa.
Although the cooking clubs are popular, many clients also find solace and friendship through the Center’s several ongoing support groups. When Berkeley resident Elsa Bea Campo, 53, was treated for breast cancer in 2002, 2003, and again in 2008, she regularly attended the group for complementary and alternative medicine. The Center also conducts groups for African-American women with cancer, women with metastatic cancer, women with blood cancers, and lesbian/bisexual/queer women with cancer. Although each group has a different focus and leader, all incorporate check-in time for each participant as well as a chance to exchange information.
In Campo’s case, the encouragement she got from other women bolstered her resolve to play an active role in her own treatment. She underwent the major surgery her doctors recommended, but decided against radiation and chemotherapy, the sometimes-grueling twin protocols that are often prescribed as a follow-up to cancer surgery. Instead, Campo chose alternatives like detoxifying, a healing diet, and herbal tinctures, basing her actions on extensive research, meetings with specialists, and personal preference. While traditional doctors might not have endorsed her decision, the nine women in her group backed her 100 percent. “In the group we always respect each other’s decisions,” says Campo. “In the end, it’s our body and we have the right to choose for ourselves.” The Center, she says, is “a very safe place,” where women will feel respected but not judged.
Volunteer LauraLynn Jansen, now a resident of Virginia, also found personal strength through her experience at the Center. An integrative health coach and yoga teacher, Jansen, 43, has spoken on panels hosted by the organization, sharing her own story of being treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 20. “WCRC helped to give me a voice,” she says. “I learned to speak up and know that what I have to say as a cancer survivor is important.” Jansen now uses skills honed at the Center as a springboard for political activism. She helped to jump-start a cancer task force in Texas, and lobbies Congress annually for increased research funding in an effort coordinated by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. “The Center gave me confidence,” she says, “and a feeling that I can really help people.”
Along with its multiple services for women with cancer, the Center is also a haven for those who want to help these women. An ongoing support group for friends and family of women in treatment is conducted on an as-needed basis. Other relatives and friends make donations to the Center, or offer their services. Sandy Olsen staffs the help line to honor her partner, who died four years ago of metastatic breast cancer. “Going through the treatment with my partner, I saw that people who are on their own are at such a disadvantage,” she says. “Many clients are alone and need help with advocacy and the hardships of going through treatment.”
For anyone who wants to step in, opportunities abound. Volunteer orientations are held three times annually, with jobs ranging from answering the telephone to helping clients with chores or transportation. A favorite event for volunteers is the annual Swim a Mile for Women with Cancer, a two-day fund-raiser held each October at the Mills College pool.
Jewel Irving has found her own way to give back: “I’ve become an advocate,” she says. Irving counsels clients referred by the Center and recently spoke to a health class at Chabot College about the risk of developing breast cancer and the importance of not being ashamed to discuss the topic. “This place gave me hope,” she says. “I’m not going to let other women give up.” She is writing a book about her own story to help those women “who are right now giving up in a dark corner with no one to talk to.”
Late one recent Wednesday afternoon, a young woman in just those circumstances comes to visit the Center’s library, where yoga class has just ended. Rolling up their mats, the participants chat about the ways in which WCRC has helped them. The young woman, who seems to be on the verge of tears, joins the conversation. She doesn’t have anyone to talk to about her difficult experience with cancer, she says; she’s come to the Center to try to find a support group she can join. Montgomery, the Community Health Advocate, hears the quaver in her voice and comes over to introduce herself. Within minutes, the two are seated together, deeply engrossed in a private conversation.
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Swim a Mile for Women with Cancer, Saturday, Oct. 3 and Sunday, Oct. 4, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, (510) 601-4040; www.wcrc.org/swim.
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Rachel Trachten is a freelance journalist and copy editor and a frequent contributor to The Monthly.
Cancer Resources
Association of Online Cancer Resources; www.acor.org/support.html.
Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic; www.charlottemaxwell.org.
Breast Cancer Fund; www.breastcancerfund.org.
Breast Cancer Action; www.bcaction.org.
Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center; www.altabates.com/clinical/
breasthealth.html.
Kaiser Permanente Oakland Cancer Care Center; https://members.
kaiserpermanente.org.
The Lance Armstrong Foundation; www.livestrong.org.
Markstein Cancer Education and Prevention Services;
www.altabatessummit.org/
clinical/markstein_intro.html.
UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center;
www.ucsfbreastcarecenter.org.
UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center; http://cancer.ucsf.edu.
The Wellness Community;
www.thewellnesscommunity.org.
Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, (510) 601-4040; www.wcrc.org.