The Augusta Area Prostate Cancer Support Group has just completed an amazing year, considering the many wonderful speakers who have come to enlighten us and the growing attendance numbers, with a room full of 20 to 30 people on many evenings. Many new faces have shown up in recent months. The brand-new small-group sessions, where we split up into groups of five or six people during the second hour, have been quite fruitful and intimate, letting us get to know some of the new folks much better than when in a large group.

We also have more help from the Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care now, with new genitourinary navigator Andrea Martelle on campus. She gets referrals from various doctors and sends the men our way for support after giving them her guidance in their treatment journey, which we greatly appreciate. It is a win-win situation.

The center to be paying much more attention to prostate cancer than in previous years. We have a new partner in guiding men newly diagnosed. Our leader, Nelson Leavitt, says he hopes to keep on leading the group, as he has for the past 15 years.

If you have not attended lately, I would encourage you to come, learn and share your experience with others who may need just that knowledge. You would really enjoy hearing some of our speakers and maybe make a new friend, too. All at no charge, except two hours of your time.

The support group meets monthly at 6 p.m. the last Tuesday of each month in the Prescott Room at the Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care. For more information, call 441-5374.

Carl Swanson

Winthrop