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Buddy Check10: Breast Connect expands services

Breast Connect is looking help newly diagnosed breast cancer patients in a new way.

Breastconnect.org is a website and Facebook page where survivors can come together to ask questions and get quick access to local resources. Now, they are launching their Sisterhood Program, which pairs a survivor with a newly diagnosed patient to encourage and support.

Leslie Apking and Deana Stiltner are volunteering as survivors to be mentors in the program. They helped eachother last year while going through the same type of chemo treatment.

"So we were able to talk to each other about the reactions we were having, our symptoms, what had helped those symptoms, and to be there to support each other and to let one another know we were thinking about them," said Apking.

Breast Connect's Sisterhood program is still in the early stages pairing sisters together by looking at what type of breast cancer they have and what treatments they might be going through.

"I didn't realize, and no one does, just how complicated it is. It can be as individual as you are. So there are a lot of hard decisions that sometimes you have to make really quickly. And so it's very helpful to have someone that's been through it, and to just give you their perspective and to give you encouragement and to help you feel like you are not alone in the process," said Apking.

"It's always more comforting to speak to someone who has went through it and has survived it, and they can tell you you're going to be fine. You can get through this," said Stiltner.

The goal of the website and the Sisterhood program is to offer support through love and not fear.

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