When you or a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, the brain can switch into overdrive.

What do I do now? How will we get through this? What sort of changes should we prepare for?

These thoughts and thousands of others can race through one’s mind. But what if a helping hand was available from those who had been in that position?

That’s the purpose of the Cancer Support Community, a public facility meant to provide assistance, guidance and someone to talk to for cancer patients and their loved ones. Breast cancer patients will be among those who will be tapping into the new facility for support.

Program coordinator Jennifer Young said open house sessions for the facility are planned in November and programs will be offered starting in January.

“The whole idea is that anyone who has been touched by cancer, family members, caregivers, survivors, have a place to come in a home-like environment,” Young said. “They can get support and also we’ll be providing programs for anybody in the community.”

The Cancer Support Community will be under the purview of, but independent from Kalispell Regional Healthcare.

The hospital will continue to provide one-on-one counseling and medical services on an individual level. The Community is designed to let people feel included in a group.

“One thing is, people newly diagnosed need somebody to talk to,” Young said. “And we’ll have mind/body programs like restorative yoga, excursions, pilates and cross-country skiing. You don’t have to be alone. We’ll make it a positive, healthy environment.”

Some of the programs offered will include physical classes and mental programs such as support groups and an “imagery room” to help with makeup and body positivity.

Trina Vanorny, a two-time survivor of breast cancer, said one facet of the Cancer Support Community she would have most looked forward to is in the facility’s new test kitchen.

“They will be having chefs come in to teach healthy recipes,” she said. “When you have chemo it tears up your mouth, so healthy recipes which are easy on the mouth and stomach are huge.”

Dr. Melissa Hulvat, a breast surgical oncologist at the Bass Breast Center at Kalispell Regional Healthcare, said the Community will help a wide spectrum of people.

“What’s great about the Cancer Support Community is that it treats anyone affected by cancer, and not just breast cancer,” she said. “It should give everything people need. What we can’t do for a person [at the hospital] is treat them back into their lives. People are social; we don’t exist in our own little bodies.”

“People don’t have anybody they can talk to,” Hulvat said. “They don’t know how to talk to their kids or how to go back to the things they want to do.”

Vanorny agreed.

“There is comfort in numbers,” she said. “Sometimes it just feels like you are going through something so crummy that it feels like you’re the only one, and that’s obviously not the case.”

Vanorny has two children now in their teens. She said she wishes something like the Community had existed for their sake while she was undergoing treatment.

“The possibility of teen programs in the high school is a major reason I’m such a supporter of this,” she said. “It’s based on building a community of survivors and family members. This community would have been an awesome resource for me outside the medical world, in not so clinical a stage.”

The Community is located at 55 W. Washington St. in Kalispell, well away from the hospital campus on a shady street in a mixed residential and commercial neighborhood. The building, a former physical therapy facility, is undergoing construction to expand the kitchen, knock down walls and increase lighting.

An “imagery” room will allow women to get fitted for wigs and put makeup on, something that can be difficult to relearn after losing hair to chemotherapy, Young said.

“For women, hair can be a big part of who they are,” she said.

The Cancer Support Community is looking for sponsors, donations and volunteers.

“Every dollar donated to the [Community] by someone in our community will stay in our community,” Hulvat said. “That is really important to us.”

The programs are free to those who have been touched by cancer. Kalispell’s Community is based on a similar one in Bozeman that hospital employee Lynn Andenoro saw several years ago.

When she brought back the idea, many people in the Flathead health-care community were quick to get on board. Hulvat was one of those people.

“What I keep telling people is the most important thing is community,” she said. “The Cancer Support Community doesn’t do housing or individual treatment. We do that at the hospital. What it does do is create a community of survivors in the broader community.”

The Community is seeking equipment and donations and as many volunteers as can be assembled. Vanorny said she will be spending time at the facility instituting a “Walking on Sunshine” program to provide “unexpected joy” to survivors with gifts such as care packages, excursions and art.

To volunteer or donate, contact Young at 871-6176 or jyoung@krmc.org.