Volunteering

Today was my first official day volunteering at the cancer center. I am going to be spending my Tuesdays at an outpatient chemotherapy clinic, where my main role is to see to the comfort of the patients. Primarily this consists of me ordering and serving them lunch, as well as any snacks they need, on top of any clerical work that needs to be done around the office. It was a rather ambitious day, because I’m not what they would call fully trained yet. Actually, no paperwork has been processed either. They needed someone and they needed someone fast, so I had one day of training and then jumped right in. Normally there is two people working, but my partner is having surgery so it was just me today.

I absolutely loved it. I mean, I LOVED it. Despite the fact that everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Let’s talk about everything that happened. First, when I trained last week, the person I was working with said “Oh, sometimes a fuse blows when the ice machine and fridge kick on at the same time, but that has only happened twice in the ten years I’ve been here, so you don’t have to worry about that.” Well I had barely even sat down upon arriving when the fuse blew and nothing worked, so I had to get ahold of the maintenance guy to fix it. Then I went and got the lunch sheet that the nurses fill out, saying who needs a lunch that day. Well when I was training last week, the person I was working with said “Wow, 13 lunches! This is a big day! It’s not normally this big.” Well, I had 17. Not only that, all but one were arriving at the clinic after I had to have the lunch orders in, which meant I had to order lunch for 16 people I didn’t know, and hope they didn’t mind what I chose for them and/or it wasn’t violating any dietary restrictions.

That actually went well. Lunches are supposed to be in by 10. I thought I was doing well when I had them in by 9:40. Except the fax machine broke. Yup, I got about six pages in and it ran out of memory or something like that. I consider myself pretty good with technology but I know diddly squat about fax machines. Thankfully the receptionist is AWESOME and helped me out. The lunch orders finally got through 20 minutes late, 40 minutes after I had begun the process.

The rest of the day went smoothly though. I just walked to each patient asking if I could get them anything, taking drink orders and whatnot. Then I wrote up ID bracelets, attached them to charts, and cleared off a display table for what I thought was one of the best things ever, but I’ll talk about that later. Lunches came and it was crazy! It took me so long to get everyone served. At first I thought I ordered too much food, but thankfully there were enough “extra” people willing to eat what wasn’t taken.

As soon as I was done serving lunches, this guy comes in from a local ice cream business, and starts serving ice cream sundaes to everyone in the building--patients, nurses, registration. I guess he comes once a month, and he is a HIT. Not only is he spending at least $400 to do this, but he is one of those genuinely nice people that everyone loves. He took time right in the middle of serving all the patients to come over and say “Hey, I just want to thank you so much for being here and what you are doing for these patients” (I was wearing the pink volunteer jacket), and I was like “Are you kidding me? Have you seen how happy you have made these people receiving their chemo treatment?” When things slowed down a little I got to really talk with him, and I instantly liked him. First, his ice cream was good. I mean, really really good. One of the best sundaes I’ve ever had. Secondly he’s like “Oh, let me get you my card,” and on the back he writes “Good for two free sundaes or one banana split.” It sounds like he was just trying to be a good business man, but I really mean it when I say how genuine he was. I admire people who can be nice and come across as truly meaning it, instead of trying to be nice, but you know they are trying (if that makes sense). Anyways, at the end he was asking me about my life goals and why I was volunteering, and when I told him one of the reasons why I wanted to be a PA instead of an MD was so I can coach, he’s like “Oh really, do you want a coaching job next winter?” Turns out he’s been an athletic and a coach and refs at three different levels, and he said “I will get you any coaching job you want.”

He had to leave, and I hung around a bit longer to help out the receptionist, who is great. She has the perfect personality for her job, and not only that, she’s a cancer survivor, and is literally the poster girl for the clinic. She was so helpful yielding all of my questions, and she’s funny too.

I left the clinic an hour and a half after my shift ended because I was enjoying myself so much. I think what I appreciated most was the great relationships I was able to form in just my first day. My supervisor came down at the end and said that people loved having me there. The receptionist was so grateful for all the extra work I did for her, and it made me so happy to see happy she was. The nurses were so welcoming. Random people in the building kept on coming up and introducing themselves. I left with a huge grin on my face. I felt this surge of positive emotion I haven’t experienced in such a long, long time. I can’t wait to go back next week, and I can’t wait until all the paperwork goes through at the other hospital I am going to be volunteering at.


:-)