The medical bills one can incur from breast cancer surgeries, treatments, etc. can be an enormous burden and extremely overwhelming—factors that can impair a survivor's full recovery. We want to help provide medical debt relief by providing a grant for nominated survivors who meet the program's qualifications.

We have partnered with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ to provide the Mama Mare Breast Cancer Foundation Healing & Education Center, which provides a serene area for patients and their families, a resource center with tablets for easy access to research and a boutique to provide wigs, turbans, prosthesis and other items needed by cancer patients. We are very proud to be raising funds to also provide chemo comfort bags to continue to provide comfort within healing, touching the lives of patients and families and carrying on the kindness and caring that is the legacy of Mary Ellen Pernice.

Besides the grueling treatments, people forget that reminders of the cancer are everywhere. The appointments on the calendar, the scan films on the counter, the phone calls from nurses and insurance companies. We cannot take their cancer away, but we can take a world of pain and despair and give it light and hope. Our programs such as My Happy Place offer breast cancer patients the opportunity to escape the world of cancer and enjoy a real break.