David having chemotherapy

(This is a really crappy picture that I took with my phone of David having chemotherapy in the fall of 2005. I never brought anything more than a phone camera with me into the clinic. It didn’t feel right to aim for “quality” pictures.)

I drove four cancer patients this morning because the Canadian Cancer Society is short of drivers right now. They’re always short, but there was such a demand on this particular day that the dispatcher practically begged me to drive. I first checked the weather forecast (because I don’t have snow tires), and mapped out all the addresses to see how many people I could take. My original number was five, but one patient’s appointment was either cancelled or she made alternative arrangements. Two of the remaining four patients were people I’d driven before, so I already knew where they lived. I set two alarms for this morning, and it took me an unusually long time (i.e., more than 30 seconds) to fall asleep because I was anxious I’d sleep past the four hours I’d had before the first hospital run.

I picked up Patient 1* at 6am. I knew I had the right house, I’d triple checked the number, I could see the lights on, but he wasn’t waiting outside like he said he would. I didn’t know what to do, so I waited. Then I knocked lightly. Then I phoned him. He said he was coming out. I can’t get annoyed — it’s his appointment after all, not mine. I’m just the driver. So I wait.

Eventually he emerged from the house, slowly but no more slowly than most of the other patients. I don’t have much time to get him to Princess Margaret Hospital but I try not to speed because I’ve already passed by one intersection accident nearby. During our conversation he admitted that he was dreading the MRI, really dreading it to the point where he was reluctant to leave the house. It wasn’t until I drove him home three hours later that he confessed just how much he’d been dreading it. He was in pain and had taken Tylenol to help him get through the appointment. At his previous MRI, they had to give him morphine.

Patient #2 actually lives very close to Patient #1 but I did not have the heart to combine their trips and take her to Mt. Sinai an hour and a half early. The appointment was already early (8:00), and I remember how badly she felt getting up early the last time I drove her. So I picked her up at 7:10 instead of 6:00, and she was very grateful. (They are always very, very grateful.)

I’d driven her before, so we continued our conversation sort of where we’d left off. I’m aware that I like to do this on purpose to promote the feeling that we aren’t having a one-off conversation, despite the fact that our connection is based purely on them being in treatment. I prefer a positive outlook, that they will recover and that we could bump into each other at the grocery store or on the street, even though drivers are trained to be discreet and avoid recognizing patients openly since people do not always disclose that they’re being treated in the first place.

Patient #2 is having chemo, so I’m dropping her off and not taking her home; chemo takes around five hours, depending on the drug and the drip rate. She’s the youngest patient of the day, and we chat about photography since she’s very interested in it. She thanked me again profusely when I dropped her off at Mt. Sinai shortly after 7:30.

Patient #3 lives in Etobicoke, but I was surprised at how little traffic there was during rush hour and arrived 15 minutes early. I found out later that she needed those 15 minutes — she was in a great deal of pain and was having other health issues plus side-effects from medication. I’d driven her last summer, but she was now using a cane and I noticed an alarming decline. She was also falling asleep in the car and had difficulty speaking.

I picked up Patient #4 enroute as she was having a procedure at Toronto Western Hospital earlier than Patient #3′s appointment at Princess Margaret. While in treatment, Patient #4 had slipped on ice and broke her shoulder, so she requested that I phone her enroute because it took her 10 minutes to put her coat on and tackle the stairs from her apartment. When I arrived, I was shocked to see a huge flight of wooden stairs at the back of the house that was the equivalent of at least three storeys. She told us in the car that she had to bribe taxi drivers to help her get her groceries up those stairs because she couldn’t carry anything with a broken shoulder, plus she was weak from the treatments.

After I dropped off Patient #4, I continued to Princess Margaret Hospital. Patient #3 was telling me something and in mid-sentence she stopped and clutched her mouth. I realized too late that I’d left the sick bags in the driver’s kit and it was in the back of the car. I was only a few streets away from PMH and she hung on while I grabbed napkins from the side door to give to her. I could tell she was doing her absolute best to ride the wave of nausea and not let it take over her. We made it to the hospital and she waited in the car while I found Patient #1, who was more than ready to go home after waiting for an hour and half after his MRI. He’d even set an alarm on his watch to wake himself up if he’d fallen asleep in the lobby. (I would’ve been none the wiser except that the alarm went off in the car.)

I’m relating these stories today in the hope that someone will read them and consider becoming a volunteer driver for the Canadian Cancer Society or any similar agency in your area that provides a driving program. I hope it’ll help people understand why the driving program exists and understand that public transit is not a viable option for many situations that cancer patients find themselves in while in treatment.

For example, rush hour: the TTC is packed and patients are, in many cases, too weak and slow to move quickly enough to keep up with the commuters. Their immune systems, which are already vulnerable and unable to ward off viruses and bacteria, can’t handle the exposure to the public and are highly sensitive to ordinary things like scents and food. I remember very clearly when David got food poisoning from eating spring rolls and it lasted for an entire month, during which he was constantly in the bathroom (I had to buy a padded toilet seat for him).

I know patients who take the TTC simply because they have to, and suffer for it. But for a driver to take even just one patient on one trip, that can make a difference in the patient’s overall health during a treatment cycle by not letting them be exposed to a multitude of illnesses. In my view, donating your time is more valuable than donating money, because it includes the human interaction in taking care of each other — non-patient to patient — that is lacking when making a monetary donation. People are skeptical about where funds are going these days, so my response to them is this: help people directly.

If you’re interested in knowing more about volunteer driving, do get in touch with me. I can pass along all the information you need to sign up.

* I feel guilty for using numbers rather than names, but I’m doing this for confidentiality