CLEARFIELD – Are you an animal lover? Has cancer affected your life or a loved one’s? The Clearfield Center for Active Living invites you to an informational session on the Hope is Alive Cancer Support Group and their Pet Foster Care program.
The program will be at 1115 a.m. Thursday at the Center for Active Living, 103 N. Front St., Clearfield. There are no reservations needed for the program.
Those interested in having lunch at the center after the program, are asked to call the day before to make a meal reservation. Any Clearfield County individual 60 years of age or older may contribute to the cost of the meal on a donation basis. The cost to those under age 60 is $3.50.
Hope is Alive, Clearfield’s cancer support group, meets each Monday at 2:15 p.m. at the Clearfield Hospital’s Cafeteria Conference Room. The support group is comprised of area cancer survivors, residents currently undergoing treatment, family members and close friends.
The purpose of the group is to offer families, friends and patients help and support when needed, and to lend an ear when someone needs to talk. New members are always welcome.
One of Hope is Alive’s services is pet foster care. If you are a patient with end stage cancer and are looking for pet care and or adoption for your beloved pet, Hope is Alive has developed an Animal Sanctuary for their patients for just such a need. They provide free foster care and adoptive homes for pets of their patients and accept cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits and birds. They do not accept any reptiles.
They have started a program called The Kathy Wolford Animal Sanctuary. The sanctuary is named after a patient who died and had no one to care for her beloved dog until a friend stepped forward. This friend had a kennel run and donated four kennel runs, which birthed the Kathy Wolford Animal Sanctuary. Hope is Alive is looking for volunteers to serve as foster parents or adoptive parents for these animals.
The support group also provides Ensure for their patients at no cost as well as “Chemo bags,” a bag filled with comfort items for patients undergoing chemo treatments. For more information, please contact Patricia McCullough, LCSW, social worker for the Cancer Center and Clearfield Hospital at 814-768-2830. McCullough said she’d eventually like to expand the sanctuary to include pets of Clearfield Hospital patients and home health care patients.
Information on this and other programs, meals and activities is available by calling the Clearfield Center for Active Living at 814-765-9319 or by visiting the CCAAA Web site at www.ccaaa.net.
