Our Mission
Our Mission
Our activities are open to participation by patients treated at any medical center even though certain groups may meet at one particular center.
Presently, we are sponsored by the City of Hope. The development of certain materials for our Web site is made possible by an unrestricted educational grant from Nexell Therapeutics . Our group's participation in the 1999 Los Angeles Revlon Run/Walk for Women is sponsored by the Rhonda Fleming Mann Foundation. In the past, our activities have been sponsored by the Amgen Corporation, the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Sasha Ferrer, the Rhonda Fleming Mann Foundation, Dr. Shari Kahane, David Kane, Jane Stoll, and Lani and Fred Peters.
About Our Logo
Because we are a patient-centered support group, we have a symbol with the individual at the center. Our support from other members of the group and our caregivers surrounds the individual. Our medical and psycho-social support teams form the outside ring. Together, the circular symbol represents the entirety of our group and its support system.
Goals
Why this approach?
Our group was started in 1991 by women who had been diagnosed with high-risk breast cancer. They had difficulty finding other patients who had received high-dose chemotherapy. But, they felt the need to find a way to provide mutual support for each other, particularly because most of who receive high-dose chemotherapy, whether with or without stem cell rescue, have primary high-risk disease, are at high-risk for recurrence, or have metastatic disease. All of these are situations that these women felt were not dealt with in the existing support groups in our area.
Since that time, high-dose chemotherapy has been used to treat other solid tumors, including germ-cell, prostate, and ovarian carcinomas, as well as sarcomas. Some men in our group have also received this treatment for breast cancer. We also now have members who have received this treatment for hematologic and lymphatic tumors as well.
From time to time, we ask our members about our direction and the usefulness of the group to them. New members respond that knowing people who have received high-dose chemotherapy makes it far easier for them to deal with the various side effects and after effects.
Among those who have received their treatment more than six months previously, their universal response is that the quality of life after completing treatment is sufficiently high that going through this treatment was worth the effort, even though some of these people have recurred after receiving high-dose chemotherapy.
If you are interested in participating with us, or if you have questions, please contact us.
Our Web Site
We have been on the WorldWide Web since December, 1997. We wish to thank the folks at Fluxtech for hosting our web site at:
None of the material on our Web site is intended to provide medical, legal, or psycho-social advice. For those kinds of information, you should contact qualified practitioners in your local area. We do intend to convey our members' experiences with the various procedures involved in cancer treatment, from the perspective of the patient, to help educate patients and their caregivers.
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