This month marks ten years since Breast Cancer Care’s first younger women’s forum and we will be celebrating this landmark in a number of ways. On 22 November we will be launching a new film showing ten women who have attended the younger women’s forums over the years – they talk about their experiences of having breast cancer as a younger woman and of attending a forum. Keep an eye on our website on the day if you’d like to have a look.
In the evening of 22 November at 7.45pm there will be a special one-off younger women’s live chat. This hour long session will give you a chance to chat in real time in a private online ‘room’ with other younger women and with our Clinical Nurse Specialist for Younger Women. We hope there will be a mixture of people who’ve been to a younger women’s forum and people who haven’t so you’ll be able to find out more about these events as well as generally sharing experiences with other younger women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.
If you’d like to join the younger women’s live chat, please email youngerwomen@breastcancercare.org.uk and let us know, so we can manage numbers.
Hiya,
Will you be doing anything special to mark the 10th year? It would be nice if BCC could.
We now have over 70 members in the FB group that Tors set up
Rae
This sounds fantastic. Thank you to all the team who have worked hard to arrange it. I hope the thread will be bumped up in the run up to the event, to jog the memories of us chemo brain girls! I will put the link on our Facebook site too. Incidentally, the private group is doing really well, there are 75 members in the space of two weeks, and perhaps it’s a format that BCC may want to look at as they are determining the services they provide for younger women? There are a lot of us who would love to help you shape the services which we feel are needed.
Hi Leah, I’m not sure if you’ve had much feedback from ladies wishing to join Thursday’s live chat. The vibes I am getting are that people don’t know what live chat is for and how it works and what you actually DO during it. I have tried to put a new thread up today to highlight there is a fantastic opportunity to live chat with other younger ladies and to ask one of the moderators to explain in plain English how it works and what you have to do, and that you don’t have to be hugely computer literate to do it. However, the new thread glitch seems to be happening again today as I can’t access a new thread. Maybe you could start a thread Leah and explain in basic language, mainly for me(!) how live chat works and when the session is?
We’ve had quite a few women sign up for the live chat, so it should be a good session. There is still room for a couple more, so if anyone would like to join in at 7.45pm tomorrow, they’re welcome to.
If you’d like to join the younger women’s live chat, please email youngerwomen@breastcancercare.org.uk and let us know, so we can manage numbers.
It is quite difficult to describe a live chat session to someone who hasn’t done one - I wonder if any regular users could help to describe it - although it’s quite straightforward once you’re there.
Basically, you log in to the chat here breastcancercare.org.uk/community/chat and it opens up a chat room. You’ll be welcomed by a moderator and a Breast Cancer Care nurse. Other people will join the room, and introduce themselves. It’ll be a chance to chat in real time to other younger women who’ve had a breast cancer diagnosis. You just type what you want to say, and submit it, and it appears on the screen as part of the chat. The discussion can move quite quickly, especially if there are lots of people on the chat, but the nurse and moderator help to make sure the discussion stays on track, that your questions get answered etc. At the end of the session, you all log out and the moderator closes the room.
So you might want to talk with other women about how your diagnosis has affected you and your family, your concerns about fertility or body image or the effects of treatment. For this hour, you’ll be chatting online, in real time, with other women who’ve had similar experiences to you.
Is that any clearer? I hope it helps. We have regular live chat sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but this is a specific session for younger women, so if you’d like to give it a try, please do. If you really like it, you can join the usual general live chat session at 9pm for a second go!
We’re pleased to be able to share with you our video marking the 10th anniversary of the Younger Women’s Forum. Ten previous attendees have reflected on their experiences from being diagnosed at a young age to attending the forum and meeting others in a similar situation. Covering topics such as fertility, breast reconstruction and intimacy and sexuality, these video accounts explain their experiences of attending one of our forums across the UK over the last ten years.
If you have attended a Younger Women’s Forum, please let us know your experience. We’re holding a screening of the video at our head office in London this afternoon and would like to read out some reflections from forum members about their experiences.
Hello everyone at BCC, thank you for running the younger women’s live chat tonight, it was really good and an excellent way for younger women to meet and chat privately without fear of their views being seen by anyone who wants to google it!!! Thank you, it was so easy to join in and very useful. I nearly missed it as I use my iPad though, and you need adobe flash player for the live chat it seems (that’s what my iPad was telling me when I tried to log in) and my iPad can’t use flash player. But it was a great idea and something I would love to see you build on. One lady had the brilliant idea of having specific subjects for forthcoming live chats, eg fertility, coping with young children, body image, sexuality and I thought this would be fantastic.
Thanks again, and thanks to Amy from BCC for being so kind and helpful.
