Fighting Chance

Fighting Chance is America's oldest and largest free cancer counseling center that operates on a regional basis - in our case the Eastern End of Long Island, which is about 440 square miles and largely semi-rural. Because of our regional service model, we can (and do) have a walk-in office in Sag Harbor where patients will find "boots on the ground... . That means licensed health care professionals - including a clinical psychologist and oncology social workers - who can meet with the patient in person. In person counseling is the "gold standard" when helping a newly-diagnosed patient cope with the negative psychological effects of cancer that include hyper-anziery, depression, insecurity and sleeplessness. In person counseling is better, by far, than telephone calls, email counseling, chat rooms or the use of two-way videos. In 2017 our 501c3 charity will celebrate its 15th anniversary. We now see about 250 newly diagnosed patients each year. We attribute our success to offering gold standard in-person counseling, providing a counseling team with over 75 years of experience navigating the cancer journey, and because we are free-of-charge which eliminates most of the paperwork and red tape patients choke on in the healthcare system.Read More