Rachel Fioret
For the Observer
After two life-changing health emergencies, Cyndy McLean is set to raise money for the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre. McLean’s 10x21 handcycling trek will take place over 21 days in September in communities that are served by the facility.
“Cancer has touched so many people and you come to realize that in a more in-depth way,” said Cyndy McLean, founder of the Cycle 4 Chemo Chairs fundraiser.
“I started my first chemo treatment on my 49th birthday at the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre, and that’s who we’re doing the fundraiser for.”
In 2003 while on a hike in Michigan, she fell 80 feet off a cliff, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. She recalled that after two months spent in a body cast in Hamilton, she “had to learn how to get around the world without walking”.
Although the incident was devastating, she picked up new active hobbies, including wheelchair tennis, adaptive cross-country skiing, kayaking, and handcycling. McLean said she loves to be outside and enjoy nature and said that exercise has played an important part in managing the pain.
In September 2018, she had surgery for an wound that would not heal, and while recovering in hospital for eight weeks, she noticed a lump in her lower abdomen. Diagnostics showed that she had stage 4 colon cancer, and it had also spread to her liver.
That was the beginning of her next series of health treatments, which started with having part of her colon and liver removed.
During this recovery stage, further tests revealed that she still had cancer, and she was then set on her chemotherapy journey. McLean underwent a total of 21 chemotherapy treatments over 10 months.
Just last year, McLean reflected on being five years post-chemotherapy, and she started to brainstorm the idea of a fundraiser.
She reached out to the Grand River Hospital Foundation and learned that new chemo chairs were a huge priority.
“I had experience and friends with experience in chemo, so the purpose made sense”, McLean recalled. She also noted that the function and comfort of chemo chairs is very important for patients.
Chemo chairs are a high-end recliner where chemotherapy patients will sit for many hours at a time. Ideally, the chairs are comfortable enough that people can sleep and relax when they aren’t feeling well, and also to have enough space so that they can do light activities while they wait for the treatment, the likes of reading or using a laptop computer.
They also need to be functional for the healthcare workers who work with the patients. The chairs also need to be durable enough for frequent disinfection and sanitization.
Those requirements make the chairs expensive at about $7,000 apiece.
The challenge is to make the chairs comfortable and sturdy, as the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre sees more than 400 people a day. Having experienced this herself, McLean says “this is why they’re so important, a critical piece to delivering this kind of care”.
The facility is a full-service cancer treatment centre that provides support and treatment including chemotherapy, radiation and clinical trials.
Before its founding 21 years ago, cancer patients would need to travel to Hamilton, London, or Toronto for treatment.
The Cycle 4 Chemo Chairs fundraiser will have a substantial impact on the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre as they rely heavily on community fundraising.
McLean attributes the current success of this fundraiser to her family, friends, and team of community ambassadors. “As we got momentum and as more people were interested in what we were doing, now we have a goal of $28,000 to purchase four chemo chairs”.
Thus far, the effort has raised $21,000. McLean says she’s optimistic they will reach their goal.
Her trek follows the local G2G trail over 21 days and includes 10 rides of 21 kilometres each across the communities that are serviced by the cancer centre. She will ride through Guelph, Fergus, Elora, Elmira, Millbank/Linwood, North Perth, Waterloo, Cambridge and Kitchener.
Every ride will have a kick-off that the community can be involved in, and information on all routes will be updated on Instagram and Facebook.
The Elmira ride will take place on September 13 at noon, along the Kissing Bridge Trailway.
The “Elmira ride is so beautiful,” said McLean, noting she intentionally chose that day as she was initially injured on a Friday the 13th and really likes that part of the trail.
Alongside McLean on her trek are community ambassadors. People from the local communities who share their stories with cancer as a way to connect with the community and have been a wonderful addition to the fundraiser.
McLean shared that she is “grateful and excited to meet people in these communities who have their own stories”.
“The stories of resilience, triumph and grief have been really remarkable.”
She’s interested in the way that people stay positive while undergoing treatment.
“Staying positive is difficult, but very important,” McLean said. For her, it was being active. She tried to do something active each day and based her activity off how she felt.
“Find the thing that works for you,” whether it be sports, crafts, cooking or a host of other options – anything that makes you feel positive and distracted, she suggested.
In addition to community building and supporting the community, donations are the main goal of the fundraiser as that will contribute to the purchasing of new chemo chairs. If you’d like to donate, you can do so on the hospital’s foundation website, www.grhf.ca/products/cycling-4-chemo-chairs.
More information about the fundraiser can be found online .
