by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
“I need a ride to cancer treatment. How am I going to get there?”
That question is heard quite often by people who deal in the treatments for cancer – most often treatments with radiation or chemotherapy. In some cases, the patients are too weak to drive, or they don’t have a car, or they don’t have friends or relatives in the immediate area.
That’s where Road to Recovery comes in. It’s a free program of the American Cancer Society that offers rides to and from treatments for cancer patients. The program is dependent on volunteer drivers.
Claudia Germann, the Stearns County coordinator for Road to Recovery, is desperately looking to find more drivers willing to volunteer. At the June 5-6 Relay for Life rally in Sartell, Germann spent a good amount of time telling people about the program, hoping it would pique someone’s interest.
Currently there are only five volunteer Road to Recovery drivers in the county – four in St. Cloud, one in Cold Spring.
Typically, cancer patients have to go daily for radiation treatments. In many cases, those people live many miles from the nearest cancer clinic, such as the CentraCare Coborn Cancer Center in St. Cloud. Germann said recently someone in Melrose needed rides to and from cancer treatments, a total travel time of about four hours. Too many volunteer drivers, she said, do not have the time commitment for so many long trips. That is why more volunteers are needed, she said, so they can take turns and get some breaks from so much driving.
Germann has deep sympathy for cancer patients, having been one herself not once but twice, first with breast cancer, later with lymphoma. She is happy to report her breast cancer has been in remission for 16 years, her lymphoma in remission for one year.
To find out more about Road to Recovery and how it works, call the American Cancer Society at 1-800-227-2345 or call Germann on her cell phone at 320-293-2920.