OhioHealth’s Hope Chest offers extra help for cancer patients
OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital’s Hope Chest gives a helping hand to patients with nowhere else to turn.
A crisp layer of frost glistened under the morning sun as Suzanne Temple drove to OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, a chilly reminder of winter the week before Halloween.
The outside thermometer read 32 degrees. The manager of the hospital’s oncology nurses turned up the heat for a warm drive to work. She was thankful she had her favorite puffy coat.
But as much as she wanted to be comfortable, Temple couldn’t stop thinking about all the cancer patients her staff would help that day who, for many reasons, had no coat, hat or gloves, and would shiver the whole way to receive lifesaving care.
“I have had nurses give the coats off their backs,” Temple said. “I had a nurse last year that literally just went and got her coat out of the locker and sent (a patient) home with that coat.”
Patients need coats, hats, gloves and blankets
This winter, the cancer staff are making sure all their patients stay warm — and the public can help with their “Winter Warmth Drive” by donating new coats, hats, gloves and blankets.
Nurses are collecting the items at the “Hope Chest” in the OhioHealth Physician’s Group Radiation Oncology Building, 330 Glessner Ave. in Mansfield, a pantry that provides cancer patients with free food, clothing, medical supplies, feminine hygiene products and household necessities.
Patients who visit the radiation building are typically so wrapped up in their battle with cancer that they don’t have much energy for anything else by the time they meet Elisa Bryant, the hospital’s business project manager for oncology services.
Those are the moments when nurses and social workers offer a little extra help.
Cancer treaments make patients sensitive to cold air
Chemotherapy agents, which the American Cancer Society describes as chemicals that destroy cancerous cells, have many well-known side effects, like fatigue, nausea and hair loss.
“A lot of the public doesn’t know that we have chemotherapy agents that make patients extremely sensitive to the cold,” Bryant said. “So it’s really important for those patients to be able to cover their hands and their face, especially as the weather starts getting cold, to make sure that they aren’t having any of those adverse reactions to that.”
Staff within the OhioHealth network in Richland County see as many as 200 cancer patients in any given day, and the odds that one of them will need a coat, hat, gloves or blanket goes up as temperatures go down.
The public can donate items at the main hospital, the medical office building, the radiation oncology building and the infusion centers in Mansfield and Shelby.
“We will be accepting new donations,” Bryant said. “We cannot accept used clothing.”
Financial contributions can be made to the OhioHealth Foundation with “Hope Chest” as the memo.
To learn more, call the radiation oncology staff at 419-526-8622.
419-564-3508
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