Breast cancer. Ovarian cancer. Thyroid cancer. Endometrial cancer.

The c-word unites them, an ugly common denominator.

These women, these cancer survivors who prefer to be called Cancer Thrivers, are spirited. Their voices fill a room at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, Mich., as their knitting needles move in, around, under and off the yarn in rhythmic fashion.

They talk to one another, and they talk to me, telling their cancer stories while they knit. The squares they make will be joined together to form lap blankets that will be given to others undergoing cancer treatment – strangers, people they don’t know, but whose struggles are familiar because they’ve been there, too.

“I have been a cancer patient since I was 33,” says Sandy Schwartz, now 69, of Franklin, who co-founded the program.

Some members have been in remission for decades. Others have had relapses. Some continue treatment.

“We’re a mess, this group, but considering we’re a mess, we do OK because we keep pushing, and we don’t give up and we have an attitude that’s not ‘Why me?’ but ‘I try,’” Schwartz says.

Pam Salba, 66, of Farmington Hills, Mich., stitches blue squares together with a big needle and yarn. She recalls the comfort of a blanket when she underwent chemotherapy and radiation two years ago to treat endometrial cancer.

“I wasn’t cold, but the security of a blanket felt good,” Salba says. “Many of my friends and family knit. So I asked everyone I knew to make a square, and then I put it together in a blanket for me. So with my blanket, it was like I had everybody with me and around me when I went through chemo.

“It’s important,” she says. “Support from your family and friends is very important.”

And being with the Cancer Thrivers is, for her, “being with women who know, who have walked in your shoes and know where you’ve been. It’s support in itself, even though it’s not a support group.”

Sharon Rocklin, 73, also of Farmington Hills, an ovarian cancer survivor, says the group is made up mostly of Jewish women, but it’s open to all with the commonality of cancer.

“We have this thing that never goes away,” she says. “I live every day in gratitude and fear. ... This is a sisterhood.

“In November, we realized we had some snowbirds in our group, and we wanted to know who was going south. One woman said, ‘It depends on the result of my mammogram.’ And we said, ‘We hope we don’t see you till spring.’”

Rocklin smiled, acknowledging that the woman is spending winter in Florida.

Eileen Ungarten is on her third round of chemo for treatment of ovarian cancer. Her symptoms began three years ago, at a time when her husband was dying of multiple myeloma.

At first, she was misdiagnosed. And though her intuition told her something was really wrong with her, she put off getting a second opinion.

“I couldn’t take care of two of us at the same time,” says Ungarten, 63, of Farmington Hills. “And I was working full-time, and so I ignored my symptoms and then I got so sick that I could no longer ignore it.”

By then, her cancer had spread.

“I did have intuition. And I was kind of afraid of it, and I let my husband’s traumas supersede my own, like a lot of women. We do that. You have to trust your intuition and go to another doctor if you have any suspicion about anything, and don’t be afraid.”

For now, she says, she doesn’t think about cancer’s stages or talk about life expectancies.

“I expect to live,” she says. “People need to be very positive because we’re really in God’s hands. That doesn’t mean we don’t do our best to take care of ourselves, but ultimately, it’s a partnership, and you can’t be afraid.”