<\/p>\n
More than 2 million Australians live in regional or remote areas and statistics tell us half of those people will be affected by cancer by the time they\u2019re 85. For people who live in areas distant from cancer care centres, getting through treatment can be challenging.<\/p>\n
SolarisCare Great Southern\u2019s Volunteer and Office Coordinator Valmai Nathan says there are many new and frightening aspects of being diagnosed with cancer for both the patient and the family, and the more familiar the surroundings the better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the latest changes in treatment, patients are now enquiring\/requesting to stay in Albany to be close to loved ones rather than travel to Perth for ongoing treatment,\u201d Ms Nathan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally have met people who have never driven further than the distance between Denmark to Albany \u2013 the idea of driving into Perth is incredibly daunting for people like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Nathan also highlighted the fact that many people in regional areas are not able to \u201cpause\u201d their lifestyle for cancer treatment, or if they do they face financial stress.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople may need to finish their seeding, shearing or harvesting\u2026if they don\u2019t do this important work at the correct time they may come up with significant financial losses.\u201d<\/p>\n
SolarisCare has regional centres in Bunbury and Albany. Ms Nathan says this accessibility in regional areas helped patients and carers better understand what support they could receive and even knew treatments they may not have known was available.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegional patients may not have been aware of the different modalities available. Complementary treatments are exactly that; a perfect complement to traditional medicine which both help towards holistic care and the feeling of security and wellbeing of patients and families,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSolarisCare can be a great haven for so many people during a turbulent storm \u2013 no one knows what lies behind the gate of cancer and everyone dreads being handed the key.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cancer care in regional areas is in demand as patients and their carers seek to stay close to home while they receive treatment. More than 2 million Australians live in regional or remote areas and statistics tell us half of those people will be affected by cancer by the time they\u2019re 85. For people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[110,111,443,584,603],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-cancer","tag-cancer-care","tag-mental-health","tag-regional-support","tag-rural-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaris.nicoleking.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}