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Home » In This Together – Light the Way Wellness House Ball

In This Together – Light the Way Wellness House Ball

    A large ballroom event with elegantly set tables full of guests, floral centerpieces, and three women posing together on stage beside a blue “WELLNESS” sign.

    Every cancer story is as unique as a thumbprint. One part medicine, one part mystery.

    Yet, the journeys for those living with cancer and those who love them are often achingly similar. At first, it feels isolating. Unfair. There are good days and bad days, some more hopeful than others. Without warning, Plan A can turn into Plan B, and then C. No dates can be set other than your next treatment. And as this goes on, weeks turning into months and months turning into years, the emotional toll can be just as impactful as the disease itself.

    Enter Wellness House, a Hinsdale nonprofit that opened more than three decades ago with a solitary purpose—to better the lives of people living with cancer and those close to them.

    Lisa Kolavennu, who is now CEO of Wellness House, first heard about the organization nearly 20 years ago when her father was diagnosed with cancer.

    Read the full article in Hinsdale Living

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    October focused on breast cancer

      For much of the world, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For Wellness House and participants like Justine Kennedy, it’s every month.

      Kennedy, a resident of Countryside, was 35 when she received a diagnosis of Stage 2B breast cancer. It wasn’t until after surgery and radiation that Kennedy turned to Wellness House to help her through what is, for many women, the hardest part of recovery.

      A family of two adults and four children sit together on a couch in a living room, all smiling at the camera.

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        When Justine was diagnosed with breast cancer at 37, she already understood the science. What she couldn’t fully know was what cancer would ask of

        Tall floral centerpiece with green foliage and hanging glass ornaments on a table in an elegantly decorated venue with blurred lights in the background.

        Light the Way’ for Wellness House and the year ahead – The Hinsdalean

          This year, the Wellness Ball on Saturday, Oct. 24, kicks off the year in high style at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago. The theme, “Light the Way,” reflects the guiding role that Wellness House plays in helping people navigate the emotional, physical and practical challenges of cancer. This year’s chairs – Dr. Angela Crowley and Dr. R. Webster Crowley; Jennifer Carmody Haunty and Jake Haunty; and Dr. Gale England Smith and Stephen Smith – all of Hinsdale, have deeply personal reasons to step into leadership roles this year. If it’s true that everyone has been affected by cancer in one way or another (including this columnist), it’s doubly so for this year’s chairs, three of whom are doctors and three of whom lost their spouses to cancer.