ENCORE #147! – Gilda’s Club and New Directions!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in April of 2018.

I had never heard of Gilda’s Club until a month or so ago.

Then my daughter interviewed there for a position as a sort of “field test” or “pre-internship” in her master’s degree program in art therapy.

According to Wikipedia, “Gilda's Club was founded by Joanna Bull, Radner's cancer psychotherapist along with Radner's widower, Gene Wilder (himself a cancer survivor) and broadcaster Joel Siegel (who died after a long battle with the disease). The first club opened in New York City in 1995, after a long fundraising campaign that included movie trailers featuring Wilder in theaters around the country. The organization took its former name from Radner's comment that cancer gave her "membership to an elite club I'd rather not belong to".”

My first reaction was, “WHERE THE F…WAS THIS PLACE WHEN WE STARTED THE HIDEOUS JOURNEY THROUGH CANCER?”

Yeah, my reaction, in my head, really WAS that strong.

The main reason we didn’t know about it was that it wasn’t here. Gilda’s Club opened here in 2014. We started our journey in March of 2011. We’ll be “celebrating” the fifth anniversary of that date this year.

I confess, I still have bitter (VERY) feelings about the lack of support we got at the beginning. My daughter shared something of the same sense after she started working at Gilda’s Club a few weeks ago. In fact, she mentioned that this experience AS a therapist intern might actually BECOME therapeutic for her. When I was on the GC page, I happened to see this:

Current Social Opportunities Offerings are:

•Coloring Club
•Knits Wits
•Euro Cafe Social 

•Greet & Eat: Male Caregivers Cooking for Guys Who Can’t Cook – w/ Jack’s Caregiver Coalition
•Open Circle Choir Performance

I confess I teared up. What I would have given to have discovered this group five years ago...it wasn’t there for me, and so I created this blog.

It’s still been a lonely slog. I KNOW I have nearly 30,000 hits here over the past five years, yet I still don’t talk to any other “male caregiver” about the journey. Even though one of the men I work with and chat with on occasion is also a “male caregiver”. The atmosphere at work isn’t conducive to talking at depth.

And so I continue on pretty much in silence, except for these blog entries.

Anyway, it’s GOOD to know that others won’t have to go it alone anymore. Gilda’s Club has twenty-something affiliates in places like New York, Chicago, Seattle, Palm Desert, Fort Lauderdale, Davenport, and besides here, another fifteen or so places. If you want a place near you, click on the link below in Resources. If you’re in the Twin Cities, email me and I can give you a little bit of info.

I’d like to try going to GC, but I still haven’t decided if I want to wallow in my bitterness a little longer or maybe find other men willing to talk about being a caregiver of a breast cancer survivor. I’ll keep you posted. 

Resources: http://www.cancersupportcommunity.org/
Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg