These Angels make a real difference
If you need some kindness done, ask a cancer survivor.
They’ve looked through death’s magnifying glass. They know what matters.
Audrey Guth found a lump in her breast seven years ago. She had three operations. Then came radiation.
She was sitting in a waiting room at Princess Margaret Hospital, when the sight of a fellow cancer patient made her heart clench. It was a young frail woman trying to contain a squirming toddler on her lap.
“There was all this angst in her face,” says Goth, now 60. “I thought, ‘I can go home and rest. My kids are big now. This young woman has to go home and still be a mom. She has no time off.’ ”
Guth runs a nanny placement agency. Two weeks later, while still undergoing treatment, she launched the Nanny Angel Network — a charity that sends volunteer professional caregivers to the homes of mothers being treated for cancer, so they can rest knowing their children are in good hands.
If someone has shown you kindness when you’ve been vulnerable, you’ll know how much this means. Now, mix in fear for your children’s future.
“It’s the first thing that goes through any mother’s head when they get that diagnosis. I don’t care how old your children are,” says Guth, a mother of four. Here’s another example. In 2008, Yves Boucher discovered the cause of the numbness in his right hand and jaw was anaplastic astrocytoma — a brain tumour that had spread “like an octopus.” Even after a six-hour surgery and a month of chemotherapy and radiation sessions, doctors figured he had only three years left, he says.
Boucher started volunteering as a peer support worker for other cancer patients at Gilda’s Club, and more recently at Bridgepoint Hospi- tal, where he visits patients once a week with his giant schnauzer Betty.
“We are fortunate to be able to volunteer,” says Boucher, 49, who was a firefighter before his diagnosis.
“It’s our little secret. We know what we are gaining from this.”
Both Guth and Boucher are winning awards from Volunteer Toronto next week. The biographies of their fellow 23 winners are a sure antidote to depression. I could write a column about each one — they are so inspirational.
Most of them would tell you they reap more than they give, though.
Guth calls her volunteer job a “magnet for kindness.”
It’s given her a window-seat into
“When you start doing something good, good people come to you. It’s magic.” AUDREY GUTH NANNY ANGEL NETWORK
the generosity of strangers.
Last December, she was surprised with a $30,000 cheque by Tim Hockey, TD Canada Trust’s chief executive, for the bank’s “Make Today Matter” campaign. She put it towards a struggling, immigrant family her volunteers had been helping for the past year.
The mother, Pryanka Sharma, was in hospital with stage 4 metastatic cancer. She had two young daugh- ters at home in Brampton, and her husband was spending four hours on buses each day to visit, because they couldn’t afford the exorbitant parking fees.
After the story aired on Canada AM, Guth received an email from the owner of an inn in the Kawartha Lakes, promising free getaway packages for her clients.
This past weekend, an Oakville daycare offered its space to sick mothers when no volunteer caregivers are available.
“When you start doing something good, good people come to you. It’s magic,” says Guth.
The next time I’m swearing at those fake sleepers on the subway — the ones who close their eyes so they won’t have to give up their seats to pregnant women and old ladies — I will recite Guth’s name.
When I ask Boucher what he gets from his volunteering, he tells me the story about an elderly Estonian woman on his street in South Riverdale. Up until she died, he shovelled her walk in winter and raked her garden in fall.
She paid him back with serenades on the piano while he worked.
Next week is National Volunteer Week in Canada. Volunteer Toronto is holding an information session on April 16 at 6 p.m. Call 416-961-6888 or visit volunteertoronto.siteym.com for more information. Catherine Porter can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca