Gilda’s Community Serves Atlanta Cancer Patients
When famed comedian Gilda Radner was struggling with the fight of her life against ovarian cancer, she reluctantly visited The Wellness Center in Santa Monica.
When famed comedian Gilda Radner was struggling with the fight of her life against ovarian cancer, she reluctantly visited The Wellness Center in Santa Monica. It was the first walk-in community of its kind to provide support for those suffering from cancer, and their families. She wasn’t sure she would be comfortable there.
In the movie “Love, Gilda,” screened at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Feb. 9 to 10 and Feb. 19 to 20, we see how she felt so welcomed there that she insisted her husband, actor Gene Wilder, attend programs with her, and that similar cancer support communities should be available throughout the country.
Unfortunately, Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989. To honor her legacy, Wilder and her therapist and friend, Joanna Bull, founded Gilda’s Club in 1991, launching chapters all over the country, including one in Atlanta, to provide psychosocial oncology services to those diagnosed with cancer and their families.
In 2009, Gilda’s Club Worldwide and The Wellness Community, which had run a facility in Atlanta for 12 years, merged under the name Cancer Support Community. Now it’s one of the largest providers of cancer support worldwide. (Full disclosure: This author has attended programs at the Cancer Support Community as an ovarian cancer survivor.)
In 2000, Northside Hospital chose Cancer Support Community Atlanta to be the provider of its psychosocial oncology services. In its 8,000-square-foot home-like space near Northside, CSC offers programs that focus on support, education, exercise, nutrition, stress reduction and social gatherings.
According to CSC Executive Director Christy Andrews, a 2007 report by The Institute of Medicine emphasized the importance of addressing the social and emotional needs of people facing cancer, rather than just their physical needs. A native Atlantan who has been in her position since 2006, Andrews says it’s imperative to “treat the whole patient, not just the medical condition.”
Unlike her experience working at other nonprofit organizations, Andrews says that at the Cancer Support Community, she gets to meet many of the 6,000 visitors who participate in the free programs. “They hang out in the hallways between classes,” she tells the Atlanta Jewish Times. “This is a lifeline for so many people.”
Indeed, one of CSC’s taglines is “so no one has to face cancer alone.” And that’s exactly why Gilda Radner became a huge fan of The Wellness Center. As the film relates, she no longer felt as isolated from society as she went in and out of various treatments that robbed her of her hair and her identity.
comments