Patient ‘Home From Home’ Comforts
A hospital stay for most people can be a daunting experience. For patients with cancer it is all the more frightening. Patients may spend many hours and days either as an inpatient on a ward or in the Radiotherapy Department awaiting treatment on a daily basis. For aftercare they will visit us yet again as an outpatient. With this strand of the Appeal, we hope to be able to provide the ‘home from home’ comforts that will make each hospital stay or daily visit a far more pleasant experience; simple comforts that will make all the difference to patients and help to ease what is for many, a very distressing period in their life.
This strand of the major appeal will provide a steady stream of funding to ensure that patients enjoy the ‘home from home’ comforts that will make all the difference to their hospital stay, whether as a day or an in-patient.
‘Home comfort’ Items can consist of anything from a simple pressure-relieving cushion or a CD radio player with headphones to more expensive items such as a stair lift or home ramp for terminally ill patients on discharge from hospital. Larger items of medical equipment can be supplied for patients on wards e.g., electric beds, rise-recliner chairs, pressure-relieving mattresses and other specialist rehabilitation equipment aids.
Many people, despite experiences of fear, grief and loss want ‘to put something back’, to take the battle against cancer forward
“Having the ramp made for my wife Anne has made such a difference to us both. It’s now possible to manoeuvre her wheelchair in and out of the house and to the car with ease. I can now take her out for drives in the country - something we both enjoy and of course it’s so much easier to keep hospital appointments too without having to worry about access and transport. Before the Cancer Centre arranged to have the ramp fitted, we simply didn’t have the freedom to move about.”
John from Wakefield
“I’d spent so much time in bed I simply couldn’t get comfortable so the ward nurses provided me with a pressure-relieving mattress purchased from charitable funds. It was such a relief to be able to find a comfortable position and to get some blissful uninterrupted sleep - I was so grateful”
Jane lives in York and was diagnosed two years ago
With your help these supplementary patient comfort aids will continue to make a big difference to everyday living for our Yorkshire cancer patients.
