When Jacquitta was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she turned to Woman to Woman, a program of The Mount Sinai Hospital, Division of Gynecologic Oncology and Social Work Services. Since its founding in 2003, the program has provided emotional support to more than 1,000 women undergoing treatment for gynecologic cancer. She met a mentor, Myrtice, a cancer survivor. Here is their story:
Jacquitta had surgery for a hysterectomy. When she woke up, the doctors told her they found cancer. “They said it was early stage, we feel that we got it all. But we need you to do six rounds of chemo. So I was devastated, to say the least,” she said.
The Woman to Woman program assigned her a mentor, Myrtice, a uterine and pancreatic cancer survivor who knew what to expect. “The chemo, of course, everybody knows it beats the hell out of you. It beat me up really bad,” she said. “But I had my sister and my daughters right there.”
When Jacquitta, left, was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she turned to the Woman to Woman program for support and got a mentor, Myrtice
Shortly afterwards, the two spoke on the phone. Myrtice could tell Jacquitta was frightened. Jacquitta was also puzzled. How did this happen to me? she asked.
When she learned that Myrtice would accompany her to her first chemotherapy appointment, she was amazed. “I said, for real? You don’t even know me. Are you sure? And she said, ‘Yes, that’s what we do. I’m going to be at all of them.’”
Several days later, when the two women met, there was an instant connection.
“I hugged her, because it was just such a connection right there,” Myrtice said. “And in my heart and soul I looked at her and I said, and I believed when I said it, ‘You’re going to beat this. And I am going to walk every step with you.’ And I meant that.”
It was empowering for Myrtice as well. “It’s important to me to help every woman that I can because this thing that they call cancer, we can’t let this take us down.”
Jacquitta was reassured. “She just talked to me and said everything’s going to be all right and asked if I needed anything. It was just incredible for someone who didn’t know you to just show up,” she said. “I felt that because she had beat it, and she was cancer-free, that she had two kinds of cancers, I thought, Wow, I can do this.”
After weeks of treatment, Jacquitta was cancer-free and her friendship with Myrtice had grown even stronger.
“We’ve become the best of friends. We’re like family,” Jacquitta said. “I call on her, and I ask her about life issues, about my job, about relationships. And she’s there for me.”
Read more about the Woman to Woman program in Inside Mount Sinai