A BREAST cancer survivor from Wantage is setting up a sufferers’ support group.

Elaine Collier, 61, said she wants to give women an environment away from the hospital to talk about how they are coping.

The mother-of-one, from Roman Way, Wantage, knows how important it is to have a friend who understands your struggle. When she was given the all-clear in 2011, she said: “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Suddenly, you are back out there alone, you don’t know whether it will come back.”

Diagnosed with a breast tumour in 2006, Mrs Collier had chemotherapy and radiotherapy before an operation removed it.

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But she said: “When you have finished treatment, family and friends say ‘thank God that’s over, you can get back to normal life’ and you think ‘what’s normal?’ You can’t be the same person you were before – every little thing that happens in your body, you wonder ‘has it spread?’”

Mrs Collier will run the free support group from her holistic healing business the Como Centre, above Bellinger’s garage, Grove, on Thursdays.

New sufferers, survivors and their families will be invited to drop in for a cup of tea and a chat. She will also offer healing therapies like reiki energy massages and reflexology foot massages for free.

She said: “Both work on an energy basis, it is about the feel-good factor. I firmly believe that in order to cure you need to work on the complete form – mind, body and spirit. To get a lady through chemo or radiotherapy, if you can get her mind in the right place it is a huge step. The mind is such a powerful tool.”

But she added: “The main thing is a cup of tea or coffee and a chat with women who know what you’re going through, away from the hospital environment.”

She said she also wanted to give women in Wantage and Grove a local support centre, so they would not have to travel to other sources of support like the Maggie’s centre at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital.

The Como Breast Cancer Support Group will launch with a session on Thursday, October 23, from 10am to 4pm.

Mrs Collier is also hoping for grants and donations and for volunteers to help run it.

 

 

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