A bond among cancer patients: Residents of Moncton lodge share experience

Four cancer patients spoke to CBC reporter Catherine Harrop earlier in November at the Mgr. Henri-Cormier Lodge in Moncton.

Harrop has returned to the lodge to write about it, months after staying there herself as a breast cancer patient.

The patients come from diverse backgrounds and different communities, but each has to make the same daily walk next door for radiation treatments at the Dr. Léon-Richard Oncology Centre.

• Where I found refuge as a cancer patient away from home 
• Overview of new cancer cases and cancer deaths in New Brunswick

Frank MacLean: ‘Everybody’s the same here’

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At Msg. Henri-Cormier Lodge, where every patient has cancer, there is no hierarchy.

“Once you walk in that door, it doesn’t matter how much money you had, or how little money you had, everybody’s the same here,” says Frank MacLean, 57.

MacLean, a former paper mill worker from Dalhousie who has been working in the West, was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He is coming to the end of a seven-week stretch of radiation treatment.

MacLean speaks emotionally about the support of his wife and how cancer affects more than the patient.

“Lot of the times you don’t realize how people are special to you until something happens,” he says.

“The terrible thing, I’ve been telling people about cancer, is that it doesn’t only affect you. My kids, are going through hell.”

MacLean had never heard of the lodge before being diagnosed, but when he mentioned it, he learned that his father had helped raise money for it with the Rotarians.

“I said to him, ‘Make sure you tell the boys your money is being well spent, the way they’re making life easier for people here.’”

Jocelyn Thomas: ‘I’ve made a lot of friends’

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Jocelyn Thomas, who works for Scotiabank in Campbellton, recently turned 62. She has travelled down to Moncton by bus for 25 radiation sessions for breast cancer.

“I couldn’t have afforded to pay a hotel and meals and travelling and everything for six weeks. No, so thank God this lodge was here.”

The six weeks have flown by for her, because of the volunteers who come in every day to offer residents a break from the boredom of waiting.

“They have sewing of a quilt, they have making jewelry, they have bingo on Monday night,” she says.

And musicians come in on Wednesday, “which is absolutely fabulous,” she says.

“Everybody’s happy, they’re enjoying the music, and some are even getting up dancing, really having a great time.”

Every resident of the lodge is encouraged to sew one patch for the quilt and to sign and put a message on it. The patches eventually make a quilt big enough to cover a bed in the lodge.

Thomas will be happy to get home but, “I’ve made a lot of good friends, and it’s just great,” she says.

“And we’re going to keep in touch.”

Kimberly MacDonald: A new kind of kindness

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Kimberly MacDonald pulls up the handmade quilt on her single bed at the Mgr. Henri-Cormier Lodge.

She says she will not be going home when her treatments for breast cancer finish.

“It’s so quiet here, and peaceful and relaxing here, ” says MacDonald.

“I had time to think about home and how bad it was. I’m definitely not going back.”

MacDonald, who came to the lodge from a village near Rogerville in Kent County, says breast cancer has changed her life for the better.

“Yes, to me that sounds weird — that I was glad I had breast cancer — but it was a way out for me.”

The 56-year-old jokes that she would stay on at the lodge if she could rent a room.

“I haven’t been treated with such kindness in my entire life.”

Out in the lounge, MacDonald stops to hug Jocelyn Thomas, a fellow patient. Soon she was embraced by three people, laughing and talking.

Gerald Girouard: ‘We’re all close’

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Gerry Girouard stands in the tunnel that connects the lodge and the  Dr. Léon-Richard Oncology Centre in Moncton.

The tunnel has large black-and-white archival photos on its walls, some that depict a less kind time in medicine.

Girouard, a former longshoreman who speaks with the soft inflection of the Miramichi, is here to be treated for bowel cancer.

A few years ago, Girouard saw the lodge for the first time when he came to visit a friend.

“And I [saw] all these people here,” says Girouard, 61.

“I see how they’re all mingling together, all enjoying themselves, and I said to myself, ‘I thought they were all sick!’”

Now, Girourd adds, he knows that for an instant in time, the people at the lodge become a family.

“They tell me some of their stuff, and their side effects and I tell them about me,” he says.

“And they always ask me how I’m feeling, and I ask them how they’re doing. They tell me they’re going to the doctor, and I wait until they come back, and I ask them how they made out. We’re all close. Unbelievable.”

Girouard will return home to begin chemotherapy.

It’s a scary future, he said, but the present is good.