PHOTOS BY BRETT MOUNTAIN

metro » o n the cover

‘It’s A

Loving group of women with
major illnesses have helped
one another for 25 years.

Blessing’

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

T

wo of them are coping
with multiple sclerosis.
One is a breast cancer
survivor. One continues to
recover from a stroke suffered 27
years ago. One had a closed-head
injury after an auto accident.
Five women facing life-threat-
ening health conditions; they’ve
been coming together monthly to
support each other for 25 years.
In 1991, Laura Kohn was
marking the one-year anniversa-
ry of her multiple sclerosis diag-

nosis. Her close friend, Arleen
Miller, was nearing the one-year
anniversary of her breast cancer
diagnosis. It was a difficult time
for both.
The women decided it might
be a good idea to get together
with others facing similar health
challenges. They each brought in
two friends and the group was
born.
Four members have been in
since the beginning. The “new-
bie” is Diane Traurig, who joined

22 years ago after she was diag-
nosed with multiple sclerosis.
At its largest, the group had 10
members.
“We’ve had to watch many of
us die,” said Kohn, “and then we
grieved together.”
All current members are
Jewish women of a similar age
(the youngest is 59, the oldest
is 68) who live in Huntington
Woods.
Susie Rabinovitz was diag-
nosed with breast cancer at 40.

“Friends would call and say, ‘My
grandmother had breast cancer,
would you like to talk to her?’ I
didn’t want to talk to someone’s
grandmother. I wanted to talk to
people my own age!” she said.
When she was invited to the
group, Rabinovitz wasn’t sure
about it. “I thought, ‘Here’s a
woman with MS; here’s a woman
who’s had a stroke.’ I thought
their situations were so different
from mine,” she said.
But she learned that the cause
of the health crisis didn’t matter;
the women were able to encour-
age each other and share love
and compassion.
“We all have our own friends,”
said Cyndy Morris, “but they
don’t like to hear about our ill-
nesses all the time. In this group,
it’s a different feeling.”
Morris was 32 when a mal-
formed blood vessel burst in her
brain, leaving her paralyzed on

her right side and unable to talk
or walk.
She was six months pregnant
with her daughter, who is now
26. Six days after the baby was
delivered by C-section, Morris
had brain surgery.
Today she can walk and talk,
but she hasn’t regained every-
thing the stroke took away. She
hasn’t been able to return to work
as a speech pathologist.
“The support group kept me
going,” she said.
“When Cyndy first came to
us, she was just starting to use
words,” Kohn said. “She would
confuse words like ‘anger’ and
‘angry,’ and look to us to know if
she was using the word right.”
The women share their frus-
trations with a medical estab-
lishment that often fails to take
women’s complaints seriously,
and have helped each other be
more assertive.

ABOVE: Susie Rabinovitz, Laura Kohn and Diane Traurig enjoy conversation at a recent It’s a Blessing gathering, where, for 25 years,
a small group of women support one another and share joys, sorrows and the ups and downs of their life-threatening illnesses once a month.

continued on page 12

10 July 7 • 2016