Marcia Donziger lost her friend Lori to brain cancer. A cancer survivor herself, Donziger found inspiration in her friend’s cancer website and founded mylifeline.org to help other cancer patients connect with friends and family.

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My name is Marcia Donziger. I am 42 years old. I was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer 15 years ago when I was 27. I have found a very rewarding way to add life to my days. I founded an organization called My Lifeline Cancer Foundation we believe a strong support community is critical for cancer patients.

We provide free, personal, private websites to help them easily connect with their friends and family online in order to get the help that they need So they don’t feel alone.

And we are online at www. mylifeline.org for me. It’s been a rewarding experience because I started the foundation because I had an issue communicating with people easily. My friends and family wanted to know how I was doing when I was going through chemotherapy treatments, and I always fell behind on calling people back and I always felt guilty about that.

A few years later, a friend of mine, Lori, was diagnosed with brain cancer at the age of 33, and her friends created this beautiful website for her. And immediately I knew this was a tool that I could have used that really would have benefited my recovery process. Unfortunately, when she passed away after two years, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

It was such a powerful experience for me as a friend to be on her online support community. So, I called her mom to see how she was doing after Lori passed away. And her mom said: Lori’s website was our lifeline.

To create a master website so that every cancer patient could create their own little community of friends and family Privately so that they could share what was going on with them receive messages back utilize a calendar to help them post their chemo and radiation treatments whether they needed to help, like a ride to the doctor, help with the kids a personal fundraising page because patients struggle so much financially.

They could let their friends and family know how they could be supported exactly. And friends and family in our, in our research and evaluations have really been appreciative to know exactly how to help their friend who is suffering from cancer. The feedback has been phenomenal.

People have said that they feel supported, they feel in control. So much of cancer you can’t control. But this is something that made them feel much more in control of the situation. They could educate their friends and family on what type of cancer they had. They could educate their friends and family on what they needed, how they needed to be supported, whether it was meals, whether it was visiting time, whether it was a day off for their caregiver.

And it’s been a very comprehensive way for them to communicate, which can be such a burden on families, I feel rewarded that we’ve been able to lift that burden off of them so that they can focus on healing and recovery.

 My diagnosis because of the ovarian cancer, I couldn’t have children. So, we had children through a surrogate and an egg donor which is also very rewarding full circle experience for me from a young adult. Cancer perspective infertility is a big issue. So being able to have a family was always a dream of mine.

 I have twin boys who are six years old now and they bring lots of life to my days. I love talking about technology and that’s what our platform is built on.

And I love helping cancer patients. I found after I survived cancer that everyone who knew someone with cancer would ask them to call me just to get that moral support and people are coming to me for all kinds of cancer. Questions as a patient and a survivor.

And so it made sense to build a system that I knew I could have benefited from, that I saw Lori benefit from, and her friends and family. So to put the love of technology and helping cancer patients together was a perfect fit for me. I have an entrepreneur background. So it was fun building something from scratch.

And, everything about it is really helped me seize every single day since then. I love work, I love my family, and I’ve been very, very lucky. The way that I seize my days is by following the passion I have in life with regards to helping cancer patients and the people I’ve met and the relationships I’ve built, after having cancer have been so extraordinary that it’s something I never would have expected that makes my life feel very full.

 An illness like cancer, and any illness, can really bring home exactly what’s important and what your priorities are, whereas before you have cancer, maybe you’re drifting around, not exactly sure what to do. But after a cancer diagnosis, things become much more clear. And I don’t know why that is, except that when your mortality is in question, it’s that’s probably something that brings a sense of urgency to your fate.

Your finding. Exactly what you want to do in your life and just pursuing that.

Because of the cancer experience and needing a surrogate mom to have a family I never would have realized it, but surrogacy was one of the best things that ever happened to me because the surrogate mom has become one of my best friends.

And she’s like the godparent of my children and this kind of relationship not many people get to have. So I feel very lucky.

Her name is Catrice. we met through a surrogate agency. Immediately when I met her, I knew that she was the one for us. we had twin boys. And, after they were born, she helped them by so many things, and our relationship has become very close throughout the pregnancy when we went to doctor appointments together.

Through the birth, when we stayed in the hospital room together. she helped me she’s one of the founders of mylifeline.org. She’s one of the, the founding board members. And, um, she really, um, It has a heart for people who suffer from cancer, for people who can’t have children on their own and, and it married her passions as well our families are still close, and my children call her Aunt Catrice, her whole family, her husband and her daughters are very important to us, I feel very lucky if I hadn’t had cancer, we wouldn’t have met them.

She has two older daughters. They babysit our boys as well. I don’t know how we got so lucky to be matched with her but we did and I think both of our families have benefited from it and now we have lifelong friendships.