Welcome to the RELPI Cancer Support Community

As many of you may know and for those who do not, I’m currently entering my 26th year of being declared “cancer free,” after a serious bout with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. To come this far is both wonderful and miraculous and also carries many emotional and physical issues that have come to bear throughout this time.

If there was one aspect that I could point out as the most difficulty is the one of loneliness in terms of my professional life. In these two plus decades along the post-cancer journey it’s been rare to find others that have also traveled this road whether with my particular form of cancer or any other and were willing to talk about it. Simply put, most industries aren’t set up to handle or deal with illnesses or the people that suffer through them and hopefully survive and our industry isn’t unique. This is not to say that business entities and organizations aren’t supportive of their employees when issues arise because so many are. What I’m indicating is that as an industry as a whole, we’re not quite there. I certainly was well cared for by my employer when going through all of my treatments. In all transparency, I worked for the family business during my time which gave me the latitude to heal. Though there are many types of wonderful interest and affinity groups that work with people on so many levels of personal and professional identity, those who’ve experienced forms of disease typically need to find support outside of our work lives. And that’s rather sad considering h