i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to jennifer cam development  liaison manager of cancer caring center and later we'll introduce you to karen school lead the co founder of face to face healing see you in a moment welcome back jennifer thank you so much for coming on today oh it's my pleasure so what can you tell me about the cancer caring center i like to call the cancer caring center the powerhouse of emotional care for cancer patients we have a variety of different ways to help people support people through treatment and beyond for instance we have support groups we run twenty nine different support groups a month they are at the center in bloomfield but they're all over the pittsburgh area for instance we have several in the south hills st clair hospital or jefferson hospital and so people don't have to cross rivers but we also have one on one therapy  through wendy who's a licensed clinical social worker so patients can come in and they can get therapy for free which is really really helpful a lot of people people are under a lot of financial burden through cancer treatments and even beyond it's  expensive thing to go through so it's fantastic that they're able to get these treatments or you know get therapy for free and they can also their spouse can come in with the patient or alone and loved ones can come  in and if you've lost somebody you can still you know you're still welcome at the center for any kind of treatment or care that's wonderful so can you tell me a little bit more about the programs that you have well we do a lot of different support groups and some of them are general cancer support groups and some of them are tailored to the specific kind of cancer that you might have like we have had in that cancer support groups we have breast cancer support groups we have african american support groups we have a wonderful program that's called jackson is for its young adult cancer support and it's for people from eighteen to thirty nine that have been diagnosed with cancer and it's really the only want to in the city that address as young cancer so in it's a fabulous  have some background in that as well don't you now i myself and my cancer survivor and i was diagnosed when i was thirty six and then i started what is called the young women's breast cancer awareness foundation and then we also are now just merged with the ca caring center so we help women under forty five with breast cancer in specifically in that group but now as a scholar under the umbrella they can also receive a lot of different support and education and we also have a food bank at the at the center in bloomfield there's a lot of different ways that people can be helped but in terms of back to the programs we also have a lot of exercise programs that are specifically for cancer patients they're  the people that train the trainers are the people that run this the classes have been specifically trained in cancer care you might have some issues whether from surgery or even under what if you're still undergoing treatment that you may need special care so we have yoga for cancer patients when we have just regular exercise classes we have art therapy at the center we also have reiki  you're familiar with that but we have that every other wednesday for free at the center and we have another program called hands on healing which is at the center every other wednesday as well so there's a lot lot of ways to help through the treatments and beyond and so you said you reach a broad audience specifically what types of groups do you i mean i heard a few of them can anyone come and receive some kind of treatment if they're looking for it  you know go to the classes or you can go to you know come to the reiki or whatever and again you don't even have to be the patient you can be the loved one or the the the caregiver many times the caregivers are under such enormous  stress you know they're they really don't have any place to go so we embrace you know all of those folks and how does the food being come into play a lot of patients with the head and neck cancer have challenges swallowing a lot of people that are on cancer treatment do you lose a lot of weight so we have ensure which is a high calorie drink with a lot of people in the cancer world use that is very expensive it's about fifty dollars a case so we do give if you are you know able to you have to fill out a certain sum forms in order to be able to make sure you're qualified but they can come and get a case of insurer once a month so that's a huge thing for a lot of patients because that is it is very are held in the evening and and they are like sometimes that depending on like you can probably get to a general group if you're willing to travel at least once a week you can a lot of them are geographically targeted and some of them me twice a month some once a month it just depends on you know what what group you find best for yourself but you know so after you go to the support group you can still go to the exercise classes the exercise classes or weekly so those are things that almost act like a little bit of support us while absolutely i mean exercise even for somebody who's not suffering is something to lift the spirits and kind of makes you feel a little better so that's really nice and how many how emotional care isn't really it's really under served and it's one of the things that i have seen just in my own foundation that if we can lift that person and help with depression or whatever else that they are struggling with and the fear and anxiety of that comes along with the diagnosis then you can lift the whole family and it is it's it's really really important there isn't really you know when you go to the hospitals i think they really try but there are there aren't enough professionals to serve all of the cancer patients so it's a much needed is a really under served need in the marketplace so we're really you know want to not only provide what we're doing but also hope to grow in the future and how did you get involved cancer i've been working with for many years probably by five or six years just with my own foundation and just trying to serve the needs of the the women my my women that are under forty five and  and they provide you know so many resources and they're incredibly helpful so and i had the the women there are just amazing there's i you know five of us there now and they're just powerful women that really want to help and really care and really are trying to do everything that they can to make these cancer patients lives better and so we started working with them and then it just made sense for me to come under their roof  do you see the cancer kerry center five years ten years down the road while i have to be providing more services i have to be able to have have more counselors on board and just to create a just a better and just feel you know not so isolated and you know try to do different social activities and things on that line that just bring bring them together and how can people get involved or you know what's the best thing that they can do to or that the general public can do to support the cancer hearings and if you know obviously you could tell people if you if you know have a loved one or somebody that you know the suffering you know just pleased to have them call us at the cancer caring center the website is cancer caring or cancer caring dot org also funding we we are self funded one hundred percent so we are always looking for partners to help us with the insurer back with the you know paying for the therapy for for the patients you know any kind of donation would be greatly accepted wonderful and so now we're going to take a look at some testimonials of people who have have been a part of the cancer caring center that video is incredibly powerful and i hope that everybody takes a moment to go to cancer care and dot org to find out more about the center whenever we come back from the break we'll have karen school of face to face healing nine we'll thanks for joining me today on the show thank you so much for having me and you're welcome so what can you tell me tell me a little bit about you and and how you got into face to face healing as you can see in my face is different than most and so i am the head neck and survivor i had cancer of the prodigal and and it required several surgeries radiation chemo those type of things and i was looking for a place for me to go the doctors do a great job they put you all back together and then the emotional support is the difficult place so i went to different support groups so i didn't really find anything that really resonated with me so i created it in it's actually something that's not and out anything that has causes scarring or causes concern and people about dealing with their self esteem it's really kind of well i what they did wonderful and you have a background in nursing i do yes by the masters in nursing and then i went back  and received a master's in business administration as well and i was doing that because i was looking at climbing the corporate ladder and so then caught my kind of my world stopped you know in two thousand and twelve when everything occurred and i was diagnosed with cancer so i was looking for something to do you know being a nurse my main things like helping people and so i didn't have that anymore and i was you know really scrambling trying to figure out what was what i was going to do next  it's almost like a grenade blew up in my life and i was trying to find out where those pieces that were missing what what can i fill them with right and so i was looking for that and i took the doctor did you put two and i was telling you know where he send your patients and he said well i don't know where they go because he was supposed to rebuild my job and unfortunately because of the radiation i wasn't able to have that done so this is the reconstruction and that's kind of like how it is so i lost my face i lost my smile and  was just asking you know where do you where they go and so i was sitting in his chair crying and he felt compelled to help me thank god and so he directed me to the shape of hospice foundation and i met louise brown is executive director there and she  healing and we actually combined with centers for integrative medicine which is in chase and they do mind body spirit and that's what i really wanted to do when i was thinking about me and what would have helped me i was thinking would kind of made this tailored this support group right so it's more about you know the interactive website where people can share their stories that offer people hope and inspiration we have resources available i have a background in case management so i want to make sure people are aware and i was even jennifer stated that you know it's when you go through this it's very financially burdening you don't have a lot of money to do things that really are complementary to the western medicine such as a yoga mindfulness meditation those type of things and so when i was going through this i was thinking about what can i do so we did get another great from the jewish health care foundation and we're able to provide yoga much size therapy meditation and nutrition counseling the those type of things as well as more mental health counseling so right now it's myself being a nurse and being a cancer survivor we also have a mental  gone in and standing ability and we're all cancer survivors and so we wanted to be able to help get back up so it's really amazing i think my favorite part is talking to the patients and helping them through what was such a guy difficult time for me at the time so i am glad i'm able to be there for support well in all of you having cancer and going through something you know i think people are mainly looking for other people that you feel the same way that can relate to them because all of a sudden they feel a little bit different than the outside world and they're trying to find like their feet again and i will and i think the good thing is that we have you both with burns and we have people that can john normally so it's really connecting with these individuals and what i find rewarding is that even though each of our stories are so different it's that connection that we have when we're in a room together it's like that eye contact to be given it's just like wow we know you have an amazing story i can't wait to hear you know it's like exciting thing and often times when around in public because of the way we look we kind of shy away from communication or connecting with other people because we're afraid of how they're going to react because it's really not it's part of just you know your mind is how it works you know you want things to be symmetrical and so it's really teaching people how to you know not you know be discouraged or you know understand that you know it's communication is key i contact this important and those type of things and so is trying to help them as well as their family members and  the community you know it could be that going back to school or it could be going to work and those type of things so it's really helping with that well and somebody in my family has had significant burns i mean not facially but on their body and it's something that i have always been like you don't even you know you barely notice but you know i know it bothers them and so it's great to have support out there and maybe some other people who you know would relate to it a little bit more of than somebody else thank you how long has been how long is that been in operation so i incorporate all my birthday august thirteenth in two thousand and fourteen that was my new birth my birthday present to myself to start something new i look at as you know originally when this happened in two thousand twelve when i was dying and i was trying to get my feet back on so two thousand and fourteen was a good starting point and so that's why we were incorporated and then we got the grant money and then we've kind of like a sort of try to working on their website and we did the videos and we were talking different people and so was really kind of cool good for me i started this to really help other people you know i think it would help me but really it's helped me grow and learn so much in my healing process is really has been the to my healing wonderful and so how do you how do people get involved with it is it during the their their process or when they get diagnosed war is it something usually afterward so it's different phases because it depends on the individual so i look at is a nurse you know it's an individualized care plan is how i really look at it so some people can come at the very beginning sometimes they're not really interested or willing to do that because they really are trying to wrap their head around their diagnosis and trying to muddle through all that piece so sometimes it's in the very beginning because they just don't know we're getting answers we get referrals from physicians we get you for like for example like being on this and maybe someone video or this you know story then they might reach out and say oh you know i know somebody or you know do or for all that way so it could be for health care professionals whether it be physicians or anyone in the health care that to produce referrals like physical therapy or that type of even family members you know say oh i know somebody you know reach out and so we've actually talked to home and you know talk to their nurses and that's actually where i was treated so they're very receptive and they're very excited to be able to offer this to you know other you lose hope and you know it's like every day is like a difficult day so to know that you're able to you know either hold someone's hand or you know tell them you know you understand what they're going through and empathize with them because you walked in those shoes and so they know that you communicate with their doctors or their family members or their loved ones a lot quicker and easier and then you just press a button it goes away and you just keep on writing so it's really something i found it really good for patients so how can people help there's various ways you can with congenital nominee and we do try to help kids even the family and the parents of the children so that's huge we started locally but now we've actually receive direct national recognition so really excited about that and w continue to do the support groups you know the website we do outreach to individuals we go to their homes we get a doctor's office that type of thing which is not something people usually do so being able to reach because it's really about face to face healing and seeing them face to face and walking with that with that journey but making the a nation's in calling us if you know somebody who is dealing with something wonderful so thank you so much for coming on today we're going to bring you back out in a moment with jen and kind of wrap up and talk about anything else oh thank you so much we're going to bring back karen and jennifer after the break to see if there's any other way we can support them in their journey to help others stay tuned for how you can help this holiday season thanks so much for coming back carrie you mentioned there's something special you're doing with video yes we're doing a faces of kindness challenge where we want people to do an act of kindness and post something that we would like a video because i think it shows more what you're doing but talking about what you're doing if you don't want to do video if you're not technically savvy then you can get a picture or even a post live in texas and make a small donation to face to face healing and try to get this going viral and actually challenge at least two to fi more people to do this because it's really about giving back and doing kind things for one another just not just about the holiday season but pretty much yes exactly and jen anything up anything coming up today that we can share with the audience that we and share that video just to get a little bit more reach out there when it was there anything else i know nonprofits expression charitable what do you think is the hardest thing about what you're trying to do and what you're trying to put out there and just think it's creating awareness for people to know there is help out there so they people don't have to suffer by themselves you know and know that there is a community of support so that oftentimes i even do referrals to care it's a caring center because i i'm not a one stop shop so to speak so it's really about all the resources available and trying to help the parish person you know looking at the whole picture well i think you both are doing amazing things out there in pittsburgh and supporting people who maybe didn't even know there is support out there so we all thank you and going forward anything we can do to support you share it please let me know and hopefully we can you can share it with the thank you very much in a while thank you thank you thank you karen and jennifer for joining us on this episode of spotlight on pittsburgh and thank you all for watching please follow us on facebook and instagram at spotlight on pittsburgh and join us again next time when we shine the spotlight on to