WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — We all need a little help sometimes.
“After losing my husband, I don’t know how anybody can survive losing their husband, it’s a horrible thing,” lung cancer patient Darla Bishop said.
Bishop didn’t even have to ask for help when it came to being admitted to the hospital.
“I started having health problems like I was having a heart attack, and I went to the hospital, finding out I had lung cancer, and these two angels stepped in, there’s a bunch of angels at the hospital, but these special ones stepped in and just took over and they’ve done nothing but help me get back on my feet,” Bishop said. “I’m just thankful that they were there and I said something about my gas and they just went off, next thing I know they was getting my gas fixed.”
She says her angels, Kimberly and Jordan, don’t wear wings but rather scrubs and a kind smile
“God sent them to me and they stepped up and they ain’t done nothing but positive things for me, and they just don’t know how much I appreciate it because it’s been a hard, especially 2 years,” Bishop said.
They’re able to help Bishop through a United Regional website called Healthy Community Find Help which provides all kinds of services.
Whether it be transportation, food, legal help, education or even grief support services through Hospice of Wichita Falls.
“The most powerful, I get goosebumps, I was sitting in a class and I had two third-graders sitting across from each other and they had both lost their dad and this little girl who hadn’t really spoken about her dad, her eyes lit up and she said ‘your dad died, too?’ Like, it’s just really powerful, so to be able to offer that at no cost to the community is something we take great honor and pride in doing,” Hospice of Wichita Falls Director of Social Services Courtney Galloway said.
It also helps hospice better serve their at-home patients.
“We have the honor of going into patients’ homes and helping them at the end of life and sometimes we don’t know what the patients need until we’re in the home and to be able to have access to that information at our fingertips have been very valuable,” Galloway said.
“Sometimes people come to the hospital for things that are not necessarily healthcare-related, whether they need assistance with food or transportation, health really starts outside of the hospital and the circumstances under which you live,” Director of Chronic Disease and Medical Management RN Dori Dockery said. “We’re seeing lots of good outcomes from having access to this site and we’re finding programs we never knew existed.”
Like a national resource that provides access to feeding tube supplies.
“It can be up to 800/900 dollars a month to get all of the supplies and things that are necessary for that and that is obviously a financial hardship on a patient that’s not expecting to need that, we found an organization, a national organization not local to our area, that keeps a database of tube feeding supplies and the actual tube feeding itself that people are willing to donate and so you go on there, see what they have available and all you pay is shipping,” Dockery said.
The best part is, it’s easy as 1, 2, 3.
“It allows us to expand our reach beyond just our local areas, so when you go on there you search by zip code and it’s going to pull up any of the programs or resources that are available in that zip code,” Dockery said.
And for some, like Bishop, it’s a lifesaver.
“They just don’t know, they just do not know what they’ve done in my life, it’s picked me up and I’m gonna stay up,” Bishop said. “I’m just so grateful cause I can start living again.”
Bishop starts her second round of chemo Wednesday, June 1.
You don’t need to be a United Regional patient to take advantage of these resources and the website is always growing.
Click here to access the Healthy Community website.
