Offering crucial support in hard times
Lifestyle - For 13 years Gort Cancer Support has been a haven for people going through illness, as well as for their families. Run entirely by volunteers, it offers a range of services and therapies in homely surroundings. Originally located in a temporary two-room space it now has a permanent base in the town centre and there are lots of plans for the future as STEPHEN CORRIGAN learns.
A cancer diagnosis lands like a bomb, bringing with it worries and angst, turning lives upside down as all those affected come to terms with an illness nobody wants to arrive at their door.
Since 2007, Gort Cancer Support has sought to be a comfort blanket for all those affected by that illness, including family and friends – and with the organisation having recently opened the newly extended Hollyblue House in Garrabeg, that vital work looks set to continue for many years to come.
At the helm is Mary Nolan, described by fellow volunteers as an unpaid manager, who jokes that her late husband John warned her as she went out to the first meeting in the summer of 2007 to be careful or she’d come home with a job – and he was right.
Since Gort Cancer Support opened in two rooms at the Old Tech, Mary has been there and has seen it transform from a very small operation into a five-days per week service, used by clients from across County Galway and North Clare.
“Back in 2007, a couple of ladies her in the town saw a great need to have a support centre – Sadie McInerney from McInerney’s Auctioneers and Anne Quinn from Quinn’s Pharmacy. Sadie is still very actively involved.
“In the beginning, all the volunteers were trained listeners. People didn’t really know what was going to be expected of the centre at the time – it was open two days a week and somebody manned the phone in the meanwhile, and that’s where we started. It was slow to take off but as time went on, more and more started to come in to us,” recalls Mary of the early days.
From the Tech, they moved to a building on the Ennis Road owned by the Brothers of Charity, but it was in 2010 when benefactors Pat and Jean Collins made what Mary calls “a very generous donation”, that they were able to purchase a permanent home.
“In 2010, there were so many properties on the market but to find a property in a suitable area was very difficult. We didn’t want somewhere in the middle of a housing estate. This building in Garrabeg came on the market and everybody thought it was in a perfect location – in town, beside the main street and yet it was private,” says Mary of the centre, just off Church Street.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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