Cancer Wellness Center: Treating the Lives Cancer Changes, Beyond Medicine

Doctors treat cancer; Cancer Wellness Center treats the lives it changes.

This Northbrook-based nonprofit has supported cancer patients and their families since 1989. Not through medical treatment, but everything that comes after it: the fear, the exhaustion, the isolation, and the thousand small decisions that need to be made while patients – and their loved ones – are trying to hold everything together.

A cancer diagnosis doesn't stay contained to the person who receives it. It reaches into close relationships, friendships, whether the patient can sleep at night, or make it through a workday. That's the part of the experience Cancer Wellness Center exists for, the part that happens outside the exam room.

The Center's services are free. So, there are no insurance barriers, and no waiting lists. Services include one-on-one counseling with therapists who specialize in cancer's emotional toll, and support groups where patients can find others going through similar experiences. Wellness programs are also available, such as yoga and nutrition guidance that are built for a body going through cancer treatment. Education is provided for anyone who is trying to understand what's ahead. These programs are open to patients, caregivers, and family members alike, including children whose parents are facing a diagnosis or treatment, as well as those who have lost a parent or loved one to cancer.

More than 2,500 individuals and families across the Chicagoland area turn to Cancer Wellness Center for this kind of support every year. Most say a version of the same thing: they didn't know this kind of help existed, and once they found it, they didn't know how they would have gotten through a cancer diagnosis without it.

That's the very reason Cancer Wellness Center exists. People don't necessarily think about where the emotional weight of cancer goes until they are carrying it themselves. By then, it helps to already know where to turn. Cancer Wellness Center is that place; a community built specifically for people whose lives have been touched by cancer, whether you're the person undergoing treatment or the one sitting in the hospital waiting room.

Learn more, or find out how to get involved, at cancerwellness.org.