Helping Teens Affected By Cancer

Emilee Lamorena, a Chicago Schweitzer Fellow and a respiratory therapy student at Rush University, understands what it’s like to lose a loved one to cancer. Just three years ago, she lost her mother to lung cancer. As Rush University Alumni Magazine reports, the experience left Lamorena feeling alone—and desperate to be around other people who’d experienced the same thing:

As she saw her mother’s health rapidly deteriorate, all Lamorena wanted to do, she said, “was sit with people who had been affected by cancer and scream, cry and yell.”

Awarded a Schweitzer Fellowship in 2012, Emilee partnered with Gilda’s Club Chicago, a national organization that supports cancer patients and their families.  During the past year, the “Teen Time” program created by Lamorena has been providing teenagers a safe space to share experiences and learn how to cope with the difficult emotions brought on by serious illness.

You can read the full piece here.