Breast Cancer Survivor Mom Gives Free Vacations to Patients and Families to Create 'Priceless Memories'

For 12 long years, this breast cancer survivor and mother has gifted cancer patients and their loved ones with vacations to escape their daily burden on medications and bills, impacting thousands of lives.

A year after her successful completion of chemo and radiation therapy, Jeanine Patten-Coble, 53, has convinced and partnered with property management companies and private homeowners nationwide to donate homes, townhouses, and condos for weeklong retreats. Breast cancer patients, with their husbands and kids, can have these retreats for free and take a break from all their daily challenges in medical appointments and healthcare bills.

The mom from Burlington, North Carolina has created the non-profit Little Pink Houses of Hope that has provided nearly two thousand families with vacations, food, and activities and adventures like zip-lining.

"For many of our families this could possibly be their last vacation. We create an environment where they no longer feel so isolated. Walking alongside them as they create priceless memories is such a privilege," Patten-Coble expressed.

How it all started

Little Pink Houses of Hope journey started in June 2009, a day after Patten-Coble found out that she has an "aggressive, malignant tumor" in her right breast.

Not knowing how to share the devastating news to her son Jake, who was then 11, she decided to go for a run during her family's annual vacation on a beach in North Carolina.

Searching for the "perfect words," and trying to come up with an "Academy Award-winning speech" to inform her child about what was happening, and what could eventually happen, she came across an abandoned beachfront property with dozens of quaint, empty houses.

And, this led to an "epiphany."

She turned and ran back to where they were staying, thinking and already planning to create a place as beautiful as what she has seen where cancer patients like her can rest and relax.

Just a year after, when the tumor was gone and she was announced cancer-free, "her beachside reverie became reality," with the help of a network of volunteers.

Read Also: Young Breast Cancer Survivors Share Experiences With Deadly Disease That 'Does Not Discriminate'

God has 'bigger plans'

The retreats, according to the cancer patients that have been helped, are exactly what they need as they go through their healthcare battles.

Toshika Hudson-Canon, 43, a youth track coach in the Charlotte-area and who was diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer last January, was able to enjoy a week of retreat with her three kids and husband at a beachside home on Emerald Isle in August.

She told People that the "getaway" she and her family were given was not only relaxing but also "transformative," even "life-changing," as their kids were able to meet other children with the same situation and were able to find friends among them.

Aside from providing retreats, the nonprofit is also focused on raising funds to cover the transportation of the patients and their loved ones to their getaway location, as this is the only expense not covered by the organization.

Patten-Coble can recall how 13 years ago, doctors were telling her that she would not make it, and yet she is still here, believing that God has bigger plans for her than letting her go. She is currently living those plans right now, and is giving so much hope and joy to cancer patients and family, whose battles she knows too well.

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