Sixty Secunda Smile volunteers spend their free time visiting cancer patients at the Santa Lucía and Rosell hospitals in Cartagena
Concerts, painting workshops, crafts and art take place in the most unexpected place in Cartagena. The family room of the Oncohematology unit 55 of the Santa Lucía hospital. There the volunteers of the Secunda Smile program, run by the Fade Foundation, go three times a week to visit cancer patients.
Some sixty young people participate in the accompaniment program. Some like Lucía Requena and Isabel Sánchez started going during the race and still continue. For Isabel it is her sixth year teaching painting workshops. And Lucía makes her debut as a tutor of the new group of the Palliative Care unit of the Rosell hospital, in her fifth year of volunteering. “My life has to change a lot for me to stop doing this,” says twenty-nine-year-old Sánchez.
He started by giving a painting workshop a month and they have already doubled that. «There are activities that began as sporadic and have become fixed due to the great reception they have had. In painting we started with one and now we do two a month », he details. They are also with the people admitted to their own rooms. «We accompany them and try to find out what hobbies they like. They are usually around fifty or sixty years old, so if they like Parcheesi or chess, we’ll bring it to them”, reveals David Buendía, coordinator of the initiative.
Secunda Smile volunteers make crafts. /
Not only the hospitalized participate, but also their relatives. “It makes them feel like a person again. A super nice atmosphere is created in the sessions. There are even patients who have discovered during classes that they like to paint and, when they are discharged, continue to do so at home. It makes them forget about the problem for a while,” says the person in charge. For Requena, “being in the hospital does not mean that they cannot live. Things can be done up to the last second.
This 25-year-old began volunteering as a way to go to the hospital before doing the internship, because “it gives you the opportunity to be with the patients. When you go to the University everything is more technical, they worry about teaching the procedures, but here you can focus on the humane treatment».
Secondary Smile volunteers. /
She is the niece of María Requena, founder of the project, whose name now bears the family room of the Santa Lucía. She started the project in 2016, while she was a nurse in that same unit and a professor at the University. Institution from which most of the volunteers come, students of the School of Nursing of Cartagena and the UCAM. For her part, for Sánchez it has meant discovering “a new world within nursing. These patients have different needs from the rest. To get to know them better, she is doing a Master’s in Palliative Care, a specialty that she wants to pursue as a result of this experience.
«They say that young people are selfish, but we are concerned about creating a better society. There is hope”, defends Lucía Requena
Both highlight how “rewarding” it is. “Their appreciation of him is what keeps us going. You get a lot from being here. We feel that it is worth coming, that what we do is useful for them, “says Requena. “Sometimes they just want company and someone to talk to. Being with us gives them freedom when it comes to expressing themselves, they tend to hide from their families how they really are, but with us they open up », she continues.
therapeutic work
“In the moments of greatest vulnerability, you discover that we are all the same and want the same thing: that they love us and be with us,” summarizes Sánchez. The therapeutic work they carry out means that, sometimes, “patients ask that their pain medication be reduced. Even if they are admitted to other areas again, they should ask for us,” Requena maintains.
Secunda Smile volunteers show off their crafts. /
To continue accompanying the patient throughout the process, this year they have also begun to go to the Palliative Care unit of the Rosell hospital. Visits to both hospitals are made on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Most of the volunteers are young people between the ages of 18 and 20. They dedicate some moments of their free time to go there. They do not receive any financial compensation in return. «They say that young people are selfish, but we are concerned about creating a better society. There is hope”, declares the niece of the founder. They also go on special dates such as Christmas or, recently, Valentine’s Day, which is when they hold concerts.
Another of the bastions on which its action is based is carried out by volunteers who have studied at the conservatory. «Every day there are more and we are incorporating new instruments. Before we only had two guitars, now we even have a transverse flute”, explains Requena.
All of its action is possible thanks to funding from Fundación la Caixa.
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