Most people hate hospital waiting rooms, but volunteer drivers for Dudley Cancer Support give up their spare time to look after complete strangers. Cathy Spencer reports.
Gordon Instone is used to spending his spare afternoons sitting in a hospital waiting room.
But Gordon isn’t ill, he is a volunteer driver for Dudley Cancer Support.
In his spare time he drives cancer sufferers to hospital in his own car, waits for them while they have their treatment, and then takes them home again.
“I’ve been a volunteer driver for four years after I promised my wife Mabel that I would do it,” says the widower, who lives in Coseley.
“She first had breast cancer in 1997 but survived until 2004.
“The doctor that treated her was brilliant and I owe those years to him.
“As a volunteer driver you meet a lot of people and most of them do appreciate what you do for them.
“This is mainly because a lot of them can’t afford to take taxis to hospital.
“Also, when you go by ambulance you have to be ready to be picked up at 8am but then can be sitting by the window, waiting for a few hours.
“After their treatment they have to wait until the ambulance is ready to take them home, so they can be at hospital for a long time.
“If they are having treatment every day for a few weeks that can be exhausting and this is when they can call on the volunteer drivers.”
Dudley Cancer Support on Ednam Road in the town has 20 volunteer drivers and every week they do up 60 runs, taking people to and from hospital.
Gordon says: “We take people to several different hospitals for treatment and consultations, but the main ones are New Cross in Wolverhampton and ones in Birmingham.
“We always wait for them to have their treatment and then we take them home and this service doesn’t cost the patient anything.
“It isn’t too bad hanging around the waiting rooms because you can get a drink and you start talking to other people.”
Alan and Maree Brown from The Straits in Gornal signed up as volunteer drivers around a year ago after Maree was diagnosed with cancer.
“Being a volunteer driver is a good way of meeting people from all walks of life,” says Alan, aged 68.
“Cancer is a great leveller as it can affect anyone, young or old, rich or poor, and we get to see them all.
“One day Maree was at Dudley Cancer Support and she started talking to John Rebello, who is in charge of transport for the centre.
“He was short of drivers and she was keen on giving something back to the centre so she volunteered.
“We haven’t done anything like this before as we both owned a newsagents in the North East and I have done lecturing in engineering in the West Midlands.
“We do use our own cars but we get paid mileage and we pick people up from across the Dudley borough and if we are helping out Bridges, which is a cancer charity in Tividale, we will pick up people from Sandwell as well.”
Dudley Cancer Support is always on the look-out for more volunteer drivers and donations, which ensure they can keep providing the service.
Bill Gardner, 52, from Great Barr, has been a volunteer driver for 10 years after he left work early due to health reasons.
“Someone told me about Dudley Cancer Support and how they were looking for drivers and so I turned up for an interview in my Reliant Robin,” he says.
“I like being a volunteer for the charity because it run on honesty and there is no bureaucracy like you get in a lot of big organisations.
“The majority of the money that is donated is passed on to the front line services, where it is really needed.
“I volunteer three days a week but we often get called up and asked to help out at other times.
“I was a heavy goods driver so I’m used to being behind the wheel.
“However, I didn’t want to do a full-time job but if you do just one run a week you know you have helped out.”
Gordon says that people can still live quite a normal life when they have cancer.
“I was still able to go on holiday with Mabel and have meals out when she had cancer,” he says.
“It was only towards the end, when she was bed-ridden, that she wanted me with her all the time.
“I didn’t sleep and lost a lot of weight. I would do it again but it was hard.
“A lot of the people that we pick up live alone and they haven’t got that support.
“I promised my wife that I would be a volunteer driver for as long as possible – and at 82 I’m still going.”
* For more information on Dudley Cancer Support, or to volunteer as a driver, call 01384 231232.
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