February 19, 1999

Natalie Lawton commends the extraordinary care she received at the MGH in 1991 while battling ovarian cancer – from her diagnosis and surgery to chemotherapy and follow-up visits. She admits, however, that additional information and resources relating to her illness were not easily accessible at that time.

"I would leave the hospital to return home feeling very alone in the confusing, terrifying world of a person with advanced cancer," she says. "I had to search for any peripheral information about nutrition, support and survival by myself at a time when I had all I could do to get through one day at a time. For my family there was even less help available."

Now, the MGH Cancer Resource Room, which opened a year ago in the Cox 1 Lobby, helps to fill that void by providing a convenient place for cancer patients and their families to find information and materials.

Located within the MGH Cancer Center, the Cancer Resource Room provides a quiet, comfortable setting where visitors can browse through its collection of books, magazines and pamphlets; watch or borrow a video; search the Internet; or just relax in a soft chair with some peaceful music.

Information also is available about the wide array of programs and activities taking place in the Cancer Resource Room and throughout the MGH Cancer Center. Offerings include seminars about nutrition, exercise and parenting as well as yoga classes, support groups and peer programs like the Network for Patients and Families, which gives patients the opportunity to meet with others experienced in living with cancer.

Sally Hooper, LICSW, and Debby Essig, LICSW, co-coordinate the room and, along with other social workers and volunteers, assist visitors in finding the information they need.

Lawton, now a cancer survivor and a volunteer in the Cancer Resource Room, believes the room and its staff help improve the experience of those facing cancer as she once did.

"I see the respect with which patients and families are treated," says Lawton. "I see how their faces change when they realize there is help and hope. I hear them comment on what a huge difference it has made to have this oasis available with all its various resources."

The Cancer Resource Room is open Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. For more information, stop by its location on Cox 1 or call at 4-1822.

In the Cancer Resource Room, Natalie Lawton, left, a cancer survivor and volunteer, and Debby Essig, LICSW, the room's co-coordinator, help cancer patients and their families find information and materials relating to their illness.