Local Group Helps Johns Hopkins Patients Battle Gynecologic Cancer
BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- Hearing you have cancer is heart breaking. The group called Kelly's Angels works to help women battling cancer and it comes ahead of the Johns Hopkins Gynecologic Cancer Survivorship Conerence later this month.
Paula Sillverman, co-founder of Kelly's Angels, hosted a group of women to help them with treatment for gynecologic cancer.
"My mom passed of ovarian cancer five years ago, and I also lost my father to cancer," Silverman said. "Out of all of those experiences, I decided I needed to take a negative and make it a positive. "Especially for a gynecologic cancer, they don't get the press, the attention that other cancers get. Women that we've talked to, say they feel alone. We are all very passionate that we don't want anyone to ever experience that."
The group combines little things that matter to women undergoing treatment in a bag.
"These bags are just to give somebody a moment of normalcy during a chaotic time in their life," said volunteer Suzanne Difurio.
Like handmade blankets, warm socks and ginger gum.
"It turns out that everything that's in there is this helpful reminder that there are other people out there that care, that have our thought into it," said cancer survivor Claudia Sansoucie.
The bags are delivered at Johns Hopkins Hospital to women in their first week of treatment.
"It allows them to have a support network beyond just their own family and a sense that we care about them, and they're more than just their cancer to us, and this is a way of showing them that," said Dr. Stephanie Wethington.
"It just touched my heart deeply to know that there are people out there that care enough to donate to this Kelly's Angels," Wilda Kriger, one of Dr. Wethington's patients. "It makes me feel good that I can give back and pay it forward to somebody else."
Still undergoing treatment, Kriger is already helping other patients.
"It just feels good to know that I can put a smile on somebody else's face, like they did for me," Kriger said.
The Johns Hopkins Gynecologic Cancer Survivorship Conference is on September 23.
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