When someone faces a diagnosis of breast cancer, their entire world upends. Every previous routine or life plan needs to be rethought, in the light of a barrage of medical information that can often feel overwhelming. Luckily, there are some human support systems in place, ideally staffed by survivors who know from experience what it’s like to go through such a terrifying transition. But the spotlight is necessarily on the individual with the illness; the effects on family members – particularly children of mothers with breast cancer – often get overlooked.
Here in the mid-Hudson, the Kingston-based not-for-profit Breast Cancer Options is a priceless resource, in operation since 2000. The organization hosts peer-led support groups and retreats for women whose cancer has metastasized. It offers consultation, referrals, mentoring, advice on healthy lifestyles, massage and acupuncture services, even the company of a knowledgeable advocate when you go for a medical visit. All of its services are free. “I don’t know what I would do without [Breast Cancer Options]. They were my first call after my diagnosis,” wrote Erica Chase-Salerno, long-running children’s editor for this publication, who died from complications of breast cancer in 2019.
But Breast Cancer Options keeps the rest of the affected family in mind as well. For the past 17 years, the organization has teamed up with the Omega Institute, the Miles of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation and the United Breast Cancer Foundation to offer the children of mothers with breast cancer the chance to attend a three-night sleepaway camp. On Omega’s lovely rural campus in Rhinebeck, kids aged 8 to 15 participate in fun activities like hiking, swimming, games, cooking, arts and crafts, in the company of others who are going through the same ordeal. Meditation sessions and sharing circles encourage these youth to verbalize their fears and offer one another emotional support. It’s called Camp Lightheart, it’s absolutely free, and it takes place this summer from August 25 to 28. Registration is now open at www.breastcanceroptions.org/camp_lightheart0.aspx.
Breast Cancer Options founder Hope Nemiroff shares the story of how Camp Lightheart came into being. In 2007, she got a call from a mother with breast cancer, saying, “I woke up this morning to find my son sleeping next to me on the floor. He said, ‘I can’t sleep because I’m worried about you. I want to take care of you.’ Do you offer any services for kids?” They didn’t, but Nemiroff contacted a friend, Joy Hausman, who was a social worker and a cancer survivor, asking for ideas. “Let’s have a camp!” Hausman responded, and recruited her psychotherapist husband Bob to help get it organized. Omega was quick to get on board, and offers room and board for free to Camp Lightheart participants.
The project was an immediate success, which Nemiroff partially attributes to the Hausmans being “a lot of fun. The kids who came in 2007 — I still hear from them… One of my senior counselors this year was one of our first group. She grew up in camp.” Offspring of women who die of breast cancer, as well as those who go into remission, are welcomed to return to camp year after year, so there’s considerable continuity, and depth of experience that can be shared to help new arrivals find their footing. “All the kids do everything together. The older kids take care of the younger kids,” Nemiroff explains. Attendees are encouraged to exchange contact information and “call us, or call each other” if they find themselves in need of a confidante in between camp sessions.
“The kids are all just happy to be there. They see other kids are in that position and they’re doing okay, and that means a lot,” says Nemiroff. “Camp Lightheart is one of the only programs like this existing for kids.” The sharing circle on the final day of camp, in particular, tends to have a “very profound effect. Some of them were having trouble in school because of what was going on at home, and they couldn’t put it into words.”
Nemiroff is a breast cancer survivor herself, diagnosed in 1995. “It changed my whole life. I was a full-time working musician before that.” Born in the Bronx as Hope Ruff, she studied art, classical music and composition, eventually falling in with the Andy Warhol crowd and the downtown Manhattan music scene. (There’s a photo of her with Warhol in Rolling Stone magazine’s book The Sixties.) She put her perfect pitch to use transcribing music for the likes of the Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan. “Sam the Sham would call me up at 3 o’clock in the morning and say, ‘I wrote a song; I’ll sing it and you can write it down for me.’ It was a great way to make a living.” She began writing her own songs, turned down a record deal with a casting-couch catch and eventually moved to Woodstock, where she met her husband and formed a band with him called the Ruffnecks.
Fast-forward to 1995, when the bad news about her own health hit home, inspiring a powerful new interest in medical science. “There was really no place to look anything up,” she recalls. So, she called up a Bronx homeboy who would go on to become chief of the Division of Breast Surgery & Breast Surgical Oncology and director of Breast Cancer Services at Montefiore Hospital, Dr. Sheldon Feldman. Among his other accomplishments in the field, Feldman started the Fern Feldman Anolick Center for Breast Health, named after his sister, at what was then Benedictine Hospital in Kingston. “I asked him four million questions at least,” says Nemiroff.
In fact, so comprehensive was her questioning that an impressed Feldman invited Nemiroff to write the questionnaire for a major breast cancer study in New York City – the first of its kind to include biopsies of all participants, she says. Her involvement in the study inspired her to seek additional blood testing, which revealed “higher than normal levels of DDT” in her blood. She detoxed, got her water tested, researched everything in her diet until she found the culprit: a brand of green tea from China, purchased at a health food store, that was “totally full of DDT… How many people go to the health food store and assume everything’s fine?”
Nemiroff’s curiosity and tenacity led her to participate in the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s science training program for cancer activists, Project LEAD. In Washington, DC she “met a whole bunch of women from New York State who said, ‘We have no organization in the Hudson Valley. Why don’t you start one?’” So she did, and Breast Cancer Options came into being. In 2001 she helped found the New York State Breast Cancer Network to lobby for state legislation, including requirements that health insurance plans cover mammograms and second opinions for breast cancer patients.
Hard science is a high priority for Breast Cancer Options. One of its major early projects was collaborating with Vassar College on developing an instructional CD-ROM for its Environmental Risks and Breast Cancer project. Advice on safe and effective options for complementary medicine/integrative therapies is part of the counseling package that the organization offers, but you won’t find any New Age mumbo-jumbo here. The group also distributes a free Healthy Lifestyles calendar that is absolutely jam-packed with useful information about how to minimize one’s risk of developing breast cancer and how to cope if you do get such a diagnosis.
Nemiroff says that she hasn’t had a vacation since she started Breast Cancer Options, and she’s beginning to think about retirement. “We’re going to have to start looking for a new executive director. We need somebody who can expand the organization,” she says. “What I really want is someone who can put me out of business. I don’t want to have to do this anymore.”
Until that happy day comes, families impacted by breast cancer can call (845) 339-HOPE (4673) with one question or four million, or visit www.breastcanceroptions.org to learn about all the programs and services that Breast Cancer Options has to offer. And if you’ve got kids, sign them up for Camp Lightheart ASAP.
Join the family! 
