A lift for cancer patients
Margaret Richardson: Volunteer Driver Scheme with the Irish Cancer Society LAST year more than 18 drivers in Sligo covered 12,000 km bringing patients to 100 hospital appointments.
In Ireland altogether more than 1.2 million km was covered bringing patients to all 21 hospitals around the country. Margaret Richardson is a Sligo Volunteer Driver with the Irish Cancer Society. Her volunteer work involves driving patients from their home in the Sligo region to their hospital appointment in Sligo, Galway or further afield. For the past 6 and a half years Margaret has been involved with the Irish Cancer Society and was motivated to get involved when friends close to her had gone through cancer.
“I thought if one little thing could be taken care of for somebody going through treatment why not apply. Every patient is incredibly grateful and I think a lot of people can’t even understand why somebody would give up their time to bring a stranger but you get far more back from it than what you give. I absolutely love it,” said Margaret.
“This particular service is an incredible help to people. They use it for a variety of reasons, but one of biggest is that although they have family and friends that can bring them to the appointments they are embarrassed to keep asking the same person week after week. For them the driver scheme is a God send.”
However while the service is available Margaret believes that more needs to be done to raise awareness for the service particu- larly in Sligo.
“We would have had families in Sligo, where people were taking time off work to bring the parent or relative to the appointment and they didn’t know about the service.
“Now they know somebody is going to pick their loved one up, wait and bring them home no matter what the time. It puts their mind at ease.”
Margaret’s caring nature is one of her attributes that makes her an excellent travel companion.
Her experience as a driver allows her to understand the needs of the patient.
“Some patients want to talk others are fairly quiet, you go with what they want.
“You let them lead, chatty or quiet. A lot of them are fairly chatty but not about their illness, usually they just talk about normal every day things.
“Without exception they are grateful, I enjoy driving anyway so I like doing it and I have met some fascinating people: young to elderly, single, married, people with children or people without. They all have a story to tell and they are all fascinating.”