May 18, 1998

New UCSC Web page provides support to women with cancer

A photo montage from "Cancer in Women's Lives." The Web pages were designed by Marty Wollesen of the University Events Office.

By Francine Tyler

Women with cancer and those close to them have a new place to go for support and information, thanks to a group of nine faculty and staff women at UCSC.

The women--most of whom are cancer survivors themselves--have created a series of pages on the World Wide Web where they tell their personal stories, dispense tips for coping with the disease, and provide information about books, organizations, workshops, additional Web pages, and other resources for people with cancer in their lives.

"Education is key," said Gwendolyn Morgan, coordinator of the Diversity Education Program, who was diagnosed with cancer in 1973. "The more information you have, the better prepared you are to deal with the disease."

The series of pages, titled "Cancer in Women's Lives," was created for UCSC faculty, staff, and student women. The group also hopes, however, that women and men worldwide who have cancer or care for someone who does will benefit from the information.

Nationwide, approximately 8 million people alive today have a history of cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute, and approximately 1.2 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 1998. Breast cancer is currently the second leading cause of cancer death in women (lung cancer is the first), with an estimated 44,000 women losing their lives to this disease every year--one woman every 12 minutes.

The idea for creating some kind of cancer resource at UCSC came about in response to requests for information from faculty and staff, said Anita Diaz, director of Student Health Services.

"We were getting calls at the health center from employees who had been diagnosed with cancer or rediagnosed," said Diaz. "The impact on staff was very significant, and we have had to deal with privacy issues in trying to help people find support."

Diaz and Shane Snowdon, director of the Women's Center, who have not battled the disease themselves, asked women who had to join them in creating a resource on cancer. A group of women from across campus--with a diverse range of experiences with cancer--came together to fill the need.

The group includes Wanda Amos, housing marketing and community rentals coordinator; Carol Douglas-Hammer, housing marketing and contracts coordinator; Marge Frantz, lecturer emerita in women's studies and American studies; Jacquelyn Marie, a librarian at McHenry Library; Betsy Moses, an assistant to the dean of social sciences; Kim Tyler, manager of the Economics Department; and Gwendolyn Morgan.

The women list their e-mail addresses on the Web pages so that they can be contacted directly by people seeking advice or support.

Snowdon said she thinks the pages the women compiled are unique: "In an Internet search, I didn't find any other collection of women's cancer stories on the Web," she said.

In addition to creating the Web pages, the group will provide information in print form for staff and faculty who don't have Web access. They have built a small lending library at the Women's Center of books they recommend, and they hope to sponsor workshops, information panels, or other activities sometime in the future.

Alongside personal stories and tips for dealing with a cancer diagnosis, the site also provides a list of books and their McHenry or Science Library call numbers so that UCSC staff, students, faculty, or others with a library card may check them out.

The women in the group who have lived with a cancer diagnosis see their work on the Web site as a way to "give back" some of the support they received from others when they were fighting the disease. "It's to share with others the strength that I got from other women when I was sick," said Betsy Moses, who was diagnosed with sarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer, in 1988.

They also wanted to make clear through the Web pages that cancer can be overcome.

"It's important to note that we are a group of survivors," said Moses. "Cancer is not a death sentence."

In fact, several of the women--Wanda Amos, Jacquelyn Marie, and Gwendolyn Morgan--have been free of cancer for nearly 20 years. Marge Frantz recently celebrated her 21st cancer-free year.

As Frantz writes in her personal story, she has come to view her experience with cancer as an opportunity for growth. "As a longtime survivor looking back now, I see that mastectomy as a watershed learning experience (scant comfort, I well understand, to anyone freshly diagnosed)," she writes. "Perhaps any event we perceive as life-threatening makes us see the world with fresh eyes, and appreciate anew everything and everybody we may have previously taken for granted."

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