Business owner aids cancer patients

CARY -- Darlene Gardner may be a small-business owner, but that's the last way she would identify herself.

Sure, she's the proprietor of The Lovely Lady, a store that sells wigs, caps, gifts and other items for women fighting cancer.

But Gardner doesn't simply sell stuff. She's part nurse, part doctor, part counselor, part mom and part friend.

Gardner has worked with thousands of women coping with a cancer diagnosis, freely offering advice and support.

"When you hear that word, cancer, people think the C word is a D word, and it is not," she says.

A brunette with short, curly hair and a flair for bright, colorful clothing, Gardner possesses the admirable ability to focus her undivided attention on the person with whom she is speaking. She has based her business on it, talking women through their cancer treatments for 30 years -- 20 of those in Cary.

"The president could enter my shop, and the woman I'm working with would still be first," she says.

Gardner hires cancer survivors because they can better relate to the women who come to her. This year, she and her staff will work with about 700 women, sometimes as many as seven or eight a day.

The store on East Chatham Street is small, with four rooms. In one, she cuts hair for women whose hair has thinned or fallen out from chemotherapy. In the front room, she displays merchandise: neatly arranged rows of wigs on mannequin heads, cotton hats, nonirritating deodorants and shampoos.

Another, with a set of couches, is just for talking.

Gardner spends hours talking with each woman, learning their stories and medical histories and listening to their fears. She takes notes in longhand and liberally dispenses near-perfect two-armed bear hugs.

And she surrounds her guests with uplifting thoughts.

On one wall hangs a framed poster quoting 1 Corinthians 13: 4, the verse that begins "Love is patient, love is kind. ... "

On a nearby shelf, a small sign advises "Cherish today," adding, "Yesterday is but a dream. Tomorrow a vision of hope. Look to this day for it is life."

Gift items like little bags with phrases such as "Happy days are made by happy people, happy people are made by choice" line shelves in neat rows.

For those who are beginning chemotherapy, she offers to buzz their hair off and help them find the perfect wig -- the one that will help them feel a bit more like themselves again.

"The women who come in here need to know that the light at the end of the tunnel is life and not a train," she says. "All the years I've done this, I've never heard the same story."

Loving acceptance

The store may be her livelihood, but Gardner says she spends a lot of time wishing that fewer people would visit her shop.

"I still have to, of course, pay the rent," she acknowledges. "But hopefully the number of cancer patients will not increase."

The store has always been profitable, Gardner says. But she tries not to focus on the money.

"A woman who is with me is just as important as my sister or my mother would be," she says.

Her understanding and loving acceptance of cancer patients has led many Triangle medical professionals to refer their patients to Gardner as well.

Over the past three and a half years, Julie McQueen estimates, she has sent more than 100 women to Gardner's shop. One of two "patient navigators" for the Duke Raleigh Cancer Center and a breast cancer survivor herself, McQueen says Gardner offers one-on-one attention not available elsewhere.

"There's something about a cancer diagnosis that makes you feel really alone," she says. "And Darlene's shop is so welcoming and it makes you feel like you are not alone."