Driven to help: Volunteers chauffeur cancer patients
It’s six minutes from Redford to radiation. Six minutes from a neat bungalow with a red awning to Garden City Hospital.
Six minutes from 87 years old to maybe hanging around until 90, or beyond. But it’s not a drive Dick Arbuckle can make anymore, at least not in the rain.
That’s where Gary Baldwin came in, behind the wheel of a silver Cadillac CTS.
“I don’t think you’re buckled up,” Baldwin said Monday morning.
Arbuckle fastened his seat belt, and off they went to save his life.
Baldwin, 71, is a moderately retired architect from Beverly Hills. Arbuckle drove an 18-wheeler for 30 years.
They intersected because Arbuckle needed a lift to a cancer treatment, and Baldwin can’t imagine someone dying for a lack of something as simple as transportation.
For the past 15 months, he’s been a volunteer with an American Cancer Society program called Road to Recovery. Along with 101 other drivers, he helped provide 2,250 rides last year to 162 patients in Southeast Michigan.
That’s the rosy part. The unfortunate part, aside from the cancer, is that 47 percent of the patients who asked for a ride didn’t get one.
There’s never a shortage of people with cancer. Volunteer drivers, however, have proven difficult to come by.
The American Cancer Society is pushing for more. To get the process rolling, call (800) 227-2345.
To get Arbuckle rolling, just help him into the passenger seat. He’ll take it from there.
“My daughter in South Lyon had a Chevy Nova,” he said, chatting happily. “That inline-six? Best motor I ever saw.”
Easy riders
Sometimes, said program manager Rachael Cook of the local cancer society chapter, the treatments are too debilitating to let a patient get behind the wheel.
Sometimes there’s only one car and the spouse who isn’t sick needs to go to work, because cancer isn’t cheap.
Sometimes, sadly, a patient is marooned, with no family or close friends nearby.
That wasn’t an issue for Baldwin’s wife.
Victoria, a Detroit schoolteacher, had him by her side for the five years she dealt with lung cancer. She beat it once, but then it came back angry, and she died three years ago this month.
In January 2014, he saw a television report about a volunteer driver in California and realized it fit his schedule and his demeanor.
He’ll drive one to three times a week — arrangements are made online — and anything beyond “Hello,” he leaves to his passenger.
“It’s entirely up to them,” he said. “I don’t probe or prompt them.”
But a 98-year-old doctor last year was fascinating, with his stories of the North Africa campaign in World War II. A woman he’s been driving for months requests him, and he’s pleased when she does.
He put 2,000 Road to Recovery miles on his car last year and it never felt like a burden.
“There’s a certain bond that forms,” he said, a few odometer clicks at a time.
The keys to success
The first qualifications for a driver are reliable transportation, a license and insurance.
The cancer society does background checks and holds a short training session. Weekday availability is helpful, since that’s when most treatments take place.
Arbuckle had radiation and a blood test Monday, and he was out the door in only 28 minutes.
“I’ve got a little thing the size of a golf ball in my lung,” he said, putting an index finger to the lower right part of his chest. “Lucky thing I got pneumonia, because that’s when they found it.”
Arbuckle said doctors are optimistic, so he might as well be, too. And he’s grateful.
He thanked Baldwin two or three times on the quick trip back from the hospital. Baldwin barely shrugged as he pulled into Arbuckle’s driveway, then came around to open the passenger door.
“It’s what we do,” he said.
nrubin@detroitnews.com
@nealrubin_dn