Charity hopes to get cancer patients on the road

WASILLA — Among the things you don’t realize about cancer treatment until you’ve lived through it: there’s a lot of driving involved.

“They have chemotherapy, they have radiation,” said Abby Kiffmeyer, account representative with the American Cancer Society in Anchorage. “With radiation, they might have 20 back-to-back appointments.”

It’s a lot of driving, and patients often don’t feel up to it.

“A lot of times they’d just cancel their appointments,” Kiffmeyer said.

Which is why the Cancer Society has what it calls a Road to Recovery Program. For years now, in Anchorage, volunteer drivers shuttle patients back and forth to their appointments. Kiffmeyer said that the program had often included Valley residents who got connected to it through their Anchorage doctors.

But now, with so many options for treatment springing up in Mat-Su, there’s actually more of a need for an all-local version. And that’s exactly what Kiffmeyer and the society are hoping to set up. She said drivers can be anybody who has a license, an insured vehicle, can pass a background check and have a good driving record.

Often the drivers are retirees and often they’ve survived cancer themselves. But, Kiffmeyer said, “we take any and all volunteers that have the time and/or are able.”

The program needs a coordinator as well, someone to juggle riders and drivers and their schedules. “Literally, if we had four people come forward and one of them wanted to coordinate, we’d have a program,” she said.

Anyone who is interested in volunteering should call Kathy Archey at 273-2077 or e-mail her at kathy.archey@cancer.org.