Volunteer drivers help cancer patients on Road to Recovery

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- When it comes to battling cancer, it's not a fight patients can typically manage alone. Patient Janie Taylor has had a great support system for her years-long battle, but she says, "After a while, you get tired of being a burden on them and you feel like you're always asking for help."

Getting too and from appointments is one of the most common help needs.

"Sometimes I have to be there at six o'clock in the morning, sometimes I have to be there at midnight," Taylor explained. "So I don't want to have to ask my 70-something year old dad to do that for me."

That's where the volunteers with the Road to Recovery come in. They volunteer to pick up patients at their homes and drive them back and forth to treatments, often when they're too sick to drive themselves. The help is invaluable and the need is great. An estimated 155,000 Texans will be diagnosed with cancer this year. Those patients will need dozens, sometimes hundreds of treatments over months and even years.

Stacie Ellis with the Road to Recovery explained, "Transportation to and from cancer treatment has been identified by patients to be a critical need, second only to direct financial assistance."

Volunteer Holly Charles said, "I would say it's one of the most rewarding things you could ever do."

"Someone is going to make sure you get to the car safely, get home safely, get tucked into bed, they are just priceless," Taylor said.

For more information about the Road to Recovery, visit cancer.org or call 1-800-ACS-2345.