Remarks by President McAleese at the Official Opening of the Cancer Care West Support Centre, Galway
Remarks by President McAleese at the Official Opening of the Cancer Care West Support Centre, Galway, Thursday 9th July 2009
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very honoured to be here with you all today to perform the official opening of this very welcome and reassuring Support Centre for those living with a diagnosis of cancer.
Today our understanding of the needs of cancer patients, their carers and families has expanded far beyond the realm of medical treatment. There are changing practical, emotional and psychological needs to be addressed and to be sustained, modified and adapted as the circumstances of the person change.
Cancer Care West puts that broad-based care of the person at the centre of its work. Somewhere here in the West today a life is about to be interrupted by a diagnosis of cancer. It was not on the radar, not in the plans for that life - but it is now and those who have received that diagnosis alone know the turbulent welter of emotions and worries that beset them faced with the shock of such news. There will be many questions and prime among them will be; just how alone am I in facing into this? Their families who love them will have their own questions and fears too.
Here you answer those questions emphatically by creating an oasis of support and comfort for people diagnosed with cancer and their families. Here whatever their needs whether it is advice about financial support, information about medical treatments, stress-reducing and illness management strategies, whether it is counselling or just a cup of tea and a chat or a listening ear, this place is here to reassure that lonely and anxious person that there is good company on this difficult road.
The concept of the centre grew, as so many models of good practice do, out of the lived experience of a cancer patient. I know that Professor Curtis and Dr Greally have visited Britain’s Maggie’s Centres, co-founded by a cancer patient Maggie Keswick Jencks, and drawn on their experience in creating this centre. The emphasis here is on living a full and good life, rich in hope and help, where illness is given its due, its place, but put in a much more wholesome and positive perspective.
We are a fortunate generation to have seen such a raft of improvements in the clinical treatment of many forms of cancer. Recovery rates are improving all the time and in many cases there will be a good outcome. Reassurance around that is essential if people are to be able to get on with living their lives to the full without being overwhelmed by imagined fears. But there will also be those for whom the news is not good and so they and their families also have to be consoled and convinced that the days ahead can be about much more than dreadful grief or fear of pain and fear of death itself but can be a time of deepened love and solace, a time to store remarkable memories of a final part of life’s journey shared well.
But for those of us who come up against a cancer diagnosis in our lives, the statistics offer different levels of comfort. For each individual, the experience is personal and our responses equally personal. Some cope with a true bravery, others with a stoical bravado and others go to bits. Most do all three at some stage, for coping with such an illness is a progressive affair and one that tests our nerves, our character, our strengths and finds our weaknesses, whether as a sufferer or as the carer or family of a sufferer.
Yet good care can bring such an uplift into our lives. It can make the difference between enduring life and enjoying life and that instinct to offer care is one of our finest and noblest human attributes. It is wonderfully showcased here in this place that only exists because enough people care about cancer sufferers. It was funded by donations, it is staffed in part by volunteers and it draws on that great natural resource which is the hard work and commitment of the people involved in Cancer Care West.
Somewhere today a family’s life is being interrupted by a diagnosis of cancer. The fact that you are here will make a huge difference to how they cope. That is real progress. Thank you to all who have made it happen and who will grow this important service for the people of the West.
I want to thank Bernard Collins, Chairman of Cancer Care West, and his Board for inviting me to be here and I wish you all the very best for the future.