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Networks ease way for cancer patients

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By Keri Brenner | The Olympian • Published December 24, 2007

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As Bobbi Illing and Sheri Zimny will tell you, a cancer diagnosis puts your life in a tailspin. The last thing you are thinking about is whether to make an appointment for a massage or where to go to take a yoga class.

You are worried, primarily, about when your life will get back to normal - or wondering whether it ever will. Your hair is falling out, you are tired and sluggish.

"The biggest part for me is that I needed to learn to breathe again," said Illing, 61, a Tumwater real estate agent and author who was diagnosed this year with breast cancer.

Though Illing and Zimny said they knew that complementary therapies such as guided meditation, acupuncture, chiropractic, tai chi, nutritional counseling, herbal remedies or acupressure might help them feel better, they didn't have those practitioners on their speed-dial.

However, both have found their way to two new services in South Sound that are designed to do all of the practitioner-locating legwork for cancer patients in advance. The services - Sound Cancer Connections based at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, and a new holistic cancer support group forming at Capital Medical Center on Olympia's west side - are setting up networks of integrative medicine practitioners who want to help ease the way for cancer patients.

"There is a change of philosophy occurring within our medical community," said Rosemary Spyhalsky, nursing coordinator for Sound Cancer Connections. "We are not only telling patients we believe in this type of care, but we are showing them that we believe in it enough to offer i t in the same building right alongside their conventional cancer treatments."

Zimny, 35, of Olympia, said a friend at work told her about a gentle yoga class for cancer patients offered through Sound Cancer Connections.

Zimny, who cannot do any impact movement because of injuries cancer caused to bones in her back, enrolled in the Sound Cancer Connections yoga class in October. It was $80 for eight weeks, she said.