Meet Missy Hirsh
What if you found your body was born without the ability to fight off cancer? “It makes how you think about your life that much more important,” shares Missy Hirsh.
Missy has Cowden’s syndrome, a little-known but increasingly growing genetic condition that puts individuals at a higher risk for multiple cancers. With six surgeries behind her since 2003, Missy credits getting through it all by living with a sense of humor.
“It would have been easy to bury my head in the sand and wallow in the fact that I had cancer,” she said when thinking about her situation. “I could understand how people put blinders on when they get this news and just follow the path that medical professionals deal out. But I wanted to make the decisions that were the best decisions for me,” she says.
One of those decisions was to visit the Gilda’s Club in Seattle, where she was living at the time when she found she had breast cancer. “I reached out to Gilda’s Club about a month and a half after my diagnosis. It was finally time for my partner and me to get our toes wet with other people who were going through this.”
In addition to the emotional support she found there, Missy says she really benefited from the special Pilates and yoga programs designed specifically for people with cancer. She also remembers the speaker programs as being “fabulous, covering everything from nutrition to new treatments, yet in a very informal, non-hospital setting.”
After moving to Atlanta, Missy sought out the Gilda’s Club here, wanting to give back and knowing that she’d always be living with cancer. After finding that the Greater Atlanta community didn’t yet have one, she has volunteered to help get one started. “What’s necessary is a place people can go when they’re ready, a place where you feel welcome and don’t feel like you’re bothering people,” she says when describing her commitment.
To help Atlantans who’ve never visited a Gilda’s Club, Missy uses the words “warm, friendly, non-threatening, non-hospital-like,” to describe one. Also, she says, “Gilda’s Club is for everybody - there isn’t any discrimination between friend, family, child, coworker. A lot of people can come through those doors for support and education.”
Missy is one of the many people living with cancer in Atlanta who know what a difference building a Gilda’s Club will make. “I think there’s something that touches people after being diagnosed,” she says, telling about a bumper sticker she created to better express how she’s feeling right now. The bumper sticker says “Share, compare, and hear - every experience has value.”
People like Missy already know what they’re missing by not having a Gilda’s Club in Atlanta. Help us open the doors today with your donation. Click here to donate online, or call 770-496-7811.
