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From: thespectrum.com
St. George resident Tosha Stevenson knows the challenges of parenting a cancer-stricken child. Her 5-year-old daughter Taleah already has undergone two years of chemotherapy treatments in Salt Lake City and is preparing for a bone marrow transplant next week because of a relapse.
Stevenson’s mother and mother-in-law have helped her care for her infant twins while seeing to Taleah’s needs hundreds of miles from home, as Stevenson’s husband tends to the family’s 3-year-old son in St. George.
One significant challenge has been figuring out where in the Salt Lake area to live during the weeks of treatment Taleah has, and will again, receive.
“Basically, in the past, we have been lucky enough to have some family within 45 minutes of Primary Children’s (Hospital). But for extended periods of time, you hate to put your family out for that long,” Stevenson said.
Throughout the state, families struggle with challenges similar to the Stevensons’ as family members battle serious illnesses that need expert and experienced care in Utah’s capital. But a building project undertaken by the Cancer Society will provide some relief once it is completed next year.
Salt Lake City’s Hope Lodge, which will provide free living suites for cancer patients and their caregivers, is the 31st announced project in the nation and the first to serve the Intermountain West, which includes Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming and Colorado.
The Hope Lodge will provide 41 suites that feature a bedroom, bathroom and private sitting area. Common areas will include a kitchen, dining area, family rooms, healing garden and activity rooms designed to encourage guests to interact and support each other.
The ACS expects to serve about 800 patients per year at the lodge, which will be open to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week once the lodge opens next summer.
Salt Lake City was chosen because of its seven premier cancer treatment centers that draw a large volume of patients from outside the Salt Lake Valley, according to an ACS news release.
In 2013, nearly 11,000 Utahns were diagnosed with cancer, and about 4,500 of them traveled to the Salt Lake Valley for care because hospitals closer to home were unable to provide the specialized treatment they needed, according to the ACS.
For Southern Utahns, the need is particularly acute when a child becomes a cancer patient. The child’s care needs to be under the direction of a pediatric oncologist, but none is available in the five-county area that includes Washington, Iron, Beaver, Garfield and Kane counties.
For Stevenson, the need to move beyond the bedroom that was offered by her relatives led her to some friends with an available basement and a child cancer patient of their own.
“I felt like (staying with our relatives) was fine for a day or two, or a weekend. But going like, ‘Hey, can we stay with you for a few months?’ I felt was a little bit much,” she said.
Stevenson considered applying to the Ronald McDonald House charities, but there was no guarantee of a room and she decided “that was not an option for us” at the time.
“It was really nice to have friends that could offer a basement apartment. They’ve pretty much just set it aside for us,” she said.
Now Stevenson is looking for yet another place to stay, however.
“It has a little kitchenette that doesn’t work for us, because after the bone marrow transplants, (Taleah is) going to be on a restricted diet,” Stevenson said. “We need a kitchen to cook in and a laundry.”
Stevenson said the family is reaching out through contacts and may have found a place for the next couple of weeks while Taleah responds to the marrow transplant.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated the property where the Hope Lodge is being built, an unused church building on the corner of 100 South and 400 East within view of the faith’s worldwide office headquarters and a few blocks away from Primary Children’s Hospital, the University of Utah’s medical center, the Huntsman Cancer Institute and LDS Hospital.
The ACS will provide free transportation to cancer patients between the lodge and the treatment facilities.
The church building at the site was demolished in March and groundbreaking for the new lodge took place last month, after the ACS announced it had raised about $17 million of the $18 million final goal for the construction project.
Materials from the demolished church were given to Habitat for Humanity as part of the largest material donation Habitat has received in Utah, according to the ACS.
Five pine trees also were removed from the site and donated to Navajo tribal members.
Barbara Jacoby is an award winning blogger that has contributed her writings to multiple online publications that have touched readers worldwide.