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To say they were happy to be there would be an understatement.
Hundreds of cancer survivors and people who care about them convened Saturday at Monterey Peninsula College. They are folks for whom the world might seem a lot more lonely and frightening if not for events like Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula’s 17th annual Cancer Survivors Celebration.
“This is an exciting event, and I’m just so happy to be here,” said Jean McGregor, 72, who is in remission from thyroid cancer that was discovered in early February. “I’m just happy to be.”
While previous gatherings have been almost entirely celebratory, this year’s 4½-hour event was amended to include education for people who have waged war against “The Big C.”
“We felt like we weren’t living up to our obligation to educate and empower cancer survivors on how they can best mitigate their risk for either having a cancer recurrence, or having a second primary cancer,” said Phillip Williams, director of Comprehensive Care at Community Hospital and an organizer of the event.
While food, drink, music and fellowship were centerpieces of the celebration, the event also included, for the first time, a gauntlet of information tables to inform patients and their families about services and resources that are available to them through Monterey County’s hospitals, nonprofit organizations and the community at large.
The event also included cooking demonstrations by renowned chef Rebecca Katz,
whose seminar, “The Power of Yum,” taught its audience how to create delectable cuisine for patients whose taste buds might be adjusting to cancer treatments.
Ultimately, though, the survivors were there to trade their stories and support each other, critical elements of what can often seem like a solitary journey.
McGregor’s story is both typical and unique.
She’s been a volunteer in the oncology unit and heart center at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital for the past seven years, providing aroma therapy and foot massage for cancer and heart patients.
“But at the beginning of (2011), I seemed to be fighting this never-ending fatigue, and I also started putting on weight, which was confusing because I’ve never been more than a size 4-6 in my entire life,” she said.
McGregor said she’s been diligent about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, first because she’s a cardiac patient, and second because she lost all three of her siblings and her husband to cancer between 1997 and 2010.
“Because of all of the family history, I guess I was expecting (cancer) on some level,” she said. “I’ve already had two different kinds of skin cancer, which, I’ve since discovered, makes a person more prone to developing a more serious type of cancer.”
In addition to her chronic fatigue, McGregor said she started to feel “like I always had something stuck in my throat. But I couldn’t get anybody to listen to me about that, and they couldn’t find anything wrong.”
McGregor believes self-advocacy contributed mightily to a battery of tests by several physicians that ultimately revealed a malignant tumor the size of a Ping Pong ball on her thyroid gland.
The tumor was surgically removed, and she takes a daily dose of thyroid hormones — treatments that have left her cancer-free.
“When they found the cancer, I actually felt this overwhelming sense of relief,” she said. “I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a hypochondriac. I had something wrong with me, and it had a name, and a treatment. It’s so important to be your own health advocate because you know your body better than anybody else. Thank God I didn’t let up.”
McGregor believes her positive outlook stems in large measure from her volunteer work at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital and the Veterans Administration hospice, where she spent three years comforting dying patients.
“I discovered at hospice that when somebody becomes gravely ill, people near them tend to put up a barrier: They become afraid to get close and show affection,” she said. “So the patient becomes reluctant to share what they’re going through because they don’t want to add to their loved ones’ stress level.”
Hospice volunteers, she said, are people who are unafraid to listen, hold a hand and wipe away or even share a tear.
“That experience has helped me immensely because I know God has me here for a reason — not just to benefit a patient, but to benefit myself,” she said. “I can always be learning, I can always become more open, I can always be more understanding.”
McGregor came to Saturday’s event with a friend, 29-year nursing veteran Bernadette Lucas-Burch, who is clinical manager of the Oncology Department at Salinas Valley Memorial. Both were first-timers at the cancer survivors bash.
“For me, it’s not what I give away (as a caregiver), it’s what I get back,” said Lucas-Burch, a longtime hospice worker. “You come out of those rooms and, yes, sometimes you cry. It’s painful. It’s often difficult to watch.
“But you see patients who are facing their situation with a positive attitude, and you often see a healing in family relationships that may have been strained before the reunion that occurred because of the disease. Those are moments that, to me, are invaluable. I want to be a part of that, and I’ve always been drawn to that type of work. It’s not that I don’t feel emotions at time, but it’s not depressing to me.”
Dennis Taylor can be reached at 646-4344 or dtaylor@montereyherald.com. Cancer resources · For more information about cancer-support resources in Monterey County, contact Community Hospital at 625-4934 or www.chomp.org.
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