I am a healthcare worker myself and had a surprising breast cancer diagnosis at the beginning of 2023.
I knew and had worked with one of the breast care nurses at my hospital. I reached out to her very early on to get support, ask questions, get some guidance and have a cry ….
Events progressed along fairly quickly from that first mamogram, to biopsy, lymph node assessment to then a complete mastectomy of the left breast together with a TRAM reconstruction. I was in hospital for 7 days and during that time was told I would then need a course of chemotherapy as the pathology assessment of the breast tissue had revealed invasive cancer cells.
Jo came to visit me whilst I was in hospital, more support, more debriefing, more tears!
It was during one of her visits she told me about the Gather My Crew APP.
I downloaded it straight away and set to organising my list of crew members and learning how to use the APP. My contacts agreed and signed up – wanting to do what ever they could to help out.
I do have a fairly close family circle, but as I was living with an Aunty at the time, I wanted support for her as well. So there were a couple of amazing friends who provided some meals to allow my Aunty to have a break from cooking duties in my early recovery period after discharge from hospital.
I was also able to use the APP to ask for “drivers” to take me to and from appointments and keep everyone updated on my progress, reports from medical appointments and results.
Whilst I didn’t need help and assistance for long, it did make it easy to ask and easy for my crew to offer and accept tasks.
Thanks for creating a wonderful APP to help people help!
