Cancer wellness center expands its reach
Aunt Susie’s merges with Stewart’s Caring Place
JACKSON TWP. — When a person is diagnosed with cancer, it often triggers challenges beyond the illness itself.
Patients often fall into debt. They can feel isolated and overwhelmed.
It’s why friends of the late Susie Darling of Perry Township started Aunt Susie’s Cancer Wellness Center, which offers such free support via transportation to treatment, housekeeping, food vouchers, medical equipment and items like wigs and mastectomy bras.
Aunt Susie’s this week merged with Stewart’s Caring Place, a Copley Township-based cancer wellness center, with the goal of expanding its reach and offering even more services.
“There will still always be a Stark location and that Stark location will always carry the name, in some respects, of Aunt Susie’s, just to keep the legacy of what they were able to accomplish here,” said retired oncologist Dr. Dina Rooney, executive director since 2022.
The Stark County site’s new name is Stewart’s Caring Place: Aunt Susie’s Cancer Wellness Center.
“We’re thrilled to be welcomed into the Stark community and in this wonderful facility and this wonderful organization that they’ve worked so hard to build,” said Sarah Vojtek, president and CEO of Stewart’s Caring Place. “We just look forward to the next chapter of both organizations together.”
Stewart’s Caring Place and Aunt Susie’s merger: ‘Helping us get bigger and better’
Founded through an endowment in 2004, Stewart’s Caring Place is named after the late Dr. Stewart Surloff, an Akron podiatrist who died from lung cancer after he was diagnosed in 2001.
Vojtek said there will be a single nonprofit board of directors that will include people from Stark County.
Services offered by Aunt Susie’s include a companion program, where volunteers make one-on-one phone calls to clients several times a month. And there’s a sewing group that makes “dignity tops,” which are basically scrub tops that have been altered to accommodate radiation treatments and ports, padded seat belt covers and post-surgical pillows.
Clients total about 110 people.
“We’ve more than tripled, almost quadrupled the amount of money we spend for a year on services for clients since 2022,” Rooney said. “But I’ve taken it as far as I can take it with my skill set and with the volunteer base that we have. And so we reached out to Stewart’s in January and asked if they’d be interested in helping us get bigger and better.”
‘Cancer impacts people in so many different ways’
Vojtek said they’re honored by the new partnership. For people with cancer, she said, “So much more goes into it. Medical treatments don’t treat it all.”
Rooney agreed, saying cancer is unlike other diseases.
“Cancer impacts people in so many different ways,” she said. “It can be impacted by your ethnic background, your race, your religion, and because everybody has different belief systems and different opinions of the health care system. But I think that the big elephant in the room is just the word ‘cancer.’”
Rooney said that when a person gets cancer, every aspect of life is impacted; a patient’s psyche can be just as important as their treatment.
“To me, the whole psychosocial part of it is as important to your healing as getting good treatment and getting food,” she said. “You’ve got that fear for your life; you’ve got that fear for all of your family and friends, and the family and friends have the fear of losing you.”
Stewart’s Caring Place: Aunt Susie’s Cancer Wellness Center is at 2813 Whipple Ave. NW near the Acme store. To learn more call 330-400-1215, or visit the agency’s Facebook page.