00:00When you're diagnosed with cancer, your whole life is turned upside down and the
00:08normalcy of community and being with friends, going to school or going to your
00:14job, all of that is all of a sudden stopped. And these families and patients
00:20need community and support to get through something so life-changing and
00:25traumatic. And Cancer Buddy is an app that will bring this community together
00:32because they're going to find other people that are going through something
00:36very similar and they're going to feel that they're not alone in this journey
00:41and having to not have their normalcy in their community. My name is Christina
00:47Merrill and I'm the founder and CEO of the Bone Marrow and Cancer Foundation and
00:52the creator of the Cancer Buddy app. As a social worker, I started the Bone Marrow
00:58and Cancer Foundation in 1992 and have been working with cancer patients for
01:03the past 33 years and saw a great need to create a strong community for cancer
01:11patients, survivors and caregivers and started the Cancer Buddy app. The fact
01:17that one in five individuals gets diagnosed with cancer is a shocking
01:23statistic and it really speaks to the fact that we need to have a stronger
01:29community for cancer patients. I grew up in Dutchess County, New York and I've been
01:35living in New York City for the last 15 years and prior to cancer I was just
01:41exploring the city, you know enjoying my 20s. Then the pandemic hit and that felt
01:46like a really screeching halt and then right when we started to get out of that
01:50I got diagnosed with cancer. I think I knew because of my experience with my mom
01:54she's a three-time cancer survivor. I just knew that's what it was going to be
01:59but at the same time it didn't ease the shock of it. It didn't make it any easier
02:03and there's no preparing yourself for hearing that. That's the day I kind of go back to the most
02:08in my mind. When you start you know everyone's rallying around you and
02:12saying you can do this you've got this but there was a point where all that
02:16adrenaline was used up and all the people that were checking in were
02:21checking in a little bit less. It felt like absolute rock bottom and what
02:25really did pull me out of a lot of that was seeing a light at the end of the
02:29tunnel and seeing that there are people like me who have made it through. People that
02:37are in my situation who have bounced back who have life on the other side. So I
02:43went to an event that Cancer Buddy was hosting when it was first launching and
02:47there were some other younger people there because it was hosted in
02:50conjunction with an Instagram page that's a cancer meme page that I
02:54followed and I downloaded it immediately. So Cancer Buddy is a platform where
03:01patients can upload their own information and swipe and to meet whoever they want to
03:07meet with based on their diagnosis, their age, their cancer center, their
03:12geographical location and many other different filters and it just allows a
03:19patient to take this into their own hands. The beauty of this app is that it
03:24is HIPAA compliant and that has always been a huge barrier in the cancer space to
03:31connect patients because of HIPAA regulations. Cancer Buddy has given me a
03:36really easy way to stay in the cancer community even when I've had to resume
03:42my regular life. I go to work every day and there are moments where on my lunch
03:47break I pop onto the app because I'm feeling a physical side effect still that
03:52I'm not I don't want to bring into my workplace and I don't want to bring up to
03:56people that might not even know about that experience for me and it gives me a
04:00place to go and it gives me like that safe space to share what I'm going through
04:06and ask does anyone have any tips or has anyone tried switching from this
04:10medication to this medication. So it gives me a place to have those
04:14conversations and find that guidance from people who have been through it not
04:19just experts who think it will help.
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