UL Student Volunteer Jane Doohan

01/05/2020

My name is Jane Doohan from final year Business majoring in Risk Management.

On finishing my Christmas exams, I followed in the tradition of all the great women in my family and offered my services to The North Louth Hospice. The hospice is at the heart of my hometown in Dundalk and unfortunately, I have known many friends and acquaintances who have required the services of Hospice volunteers.

With increasing numbers of people suffering from cancer The North Louth Hospice has been inundated with requests for assistance and they were genuinely thrilled to receive an offer of volunteer support from me. I was conscripted as a driver bringing patients from Dundalk and its hinterlands to hospitals in the Greater Dublin Area where they were required to attend for chemotherapy sessions. While majoring in Risk Management didn’t prepare me for this role, driving extremely ill patients to chemotherapy offered me an insight into genuine life issues that I had never previously considered. Items like, the fragility of life, the importance of loving the ones around us and the realisation that there is always someone worse off came into sharp focus when you are surrounded by people fighting for their life.

Being able to support people in such trying circumstances has had a dramatic effect on me and on my return to UL in January I committed to continuing my volunteer work. While this required some skilled juggling with my academic timetable, I continued volunteering with the Hospice up to the end of March.

While COVID19 understandably has dominated our recent thoughts, treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy need to continue and volunteers help make this journey possible for many. Everyone in our country hopes to have these COVID19 regulations relax in the near future but I personally look forward to hearing more fantastic North Louth Hospice volunteer stories and meeting more phenomenal cancer sufferers who significantly shorten the length of the M1 motorway. The support of individuals through this crisis are largely going to determine what services charities will be able to provide over the next few months, so I urge you, if you can – help out in whatever shape that may be.