Shamichael Traylor burst into the Loving Arms Cancer Outreach office on a recent afternoon, grinning broadly.
“Look what somebody just donated,” she exulted, cradling a brand new Coach purse in the crook of her arm like a newborn baby. “We can raffle it off!”
From behind her desk, Diana Hurst cackled. “I think she carries raffle tickets in her back pocket everywhere she goes,” she confided to a visitor.
Traylor just nodded: “You never know when something good might come along.”
That could be Loving Arms’ motto. A little less than three years ago, Traylor and Hurst were working together as infusion nurses at the Kennestone Cancer Center in Marietta and comparing notes about patients’ many unexpected or uncovered needs:
Transportation to and from chemotherapy sessions for those unable to drive themselves … Proper-fitting wigs for patients without the means to track them down … Groceries for someone who has been in and out of the hospital so much, they no longer have a job …
You never know.
“Diana and I started talking and we found each one of us was paying for patients’ parking or co-pays out of our own pockets sometimes,” said Traylor, 41, a Marietta resident. So were other nurses and doctors they knew. “We were like, ‘We need to do this and that.’”
“This and that” quickly grew into Loving Arms, a nonprofit organization the two nurses started to help patients on the sometimes bumpy road to recovery. It began with them working in a conference room their employer, Northwest Georgia Oncology Centers, or NGOC, let them use. (“We had rolling luggage for our ‘desks,’” Paulding resident Hurst, 58, recalled.) Then, last year, the organization expanded to an office suite across the street from Wellstar Kennestone Hospital.
From those early days when they raised money by selling Traylor’s handmade “butterfly” towels and other crafts and handed out gas cards, Loving Arms now offers services ranging from support groups and financial assistance to wig fittings, transportation services and much more.
“It’s exploded in terms of its growth, which really speaks to the monumental needs of the patients they serve,” said Dr. Bruce Gould, medical director for NGOC, which provided a $2,500-a-month stipend to Loving Arms that was initially supposed to last for six months — and then was renewed for another six months. “We know money going there is going to be used to help local patients with real needs.”
Nurses at Kennestone Cancer Center sometimes send patients across the street for help. Doctors throughout Georgia can refer patients to Loving Arms. Following a needs assessment, each client is eligible for up to $600 worth of financial assistance, which frequently goes to things such as food, medicine, utilities, even parking fees at the hospital. Sometimes, though, the need is more specialized: A “sitter” for someone in hospice care at home while their loved one is at work, for instance. And for issues money can’t solve: “We now have a list of almost 300 volunteers who we can send out an email to if we need to fill a need,” Hurst said.
That never-say-no attitude is infectious, said Roy Ferguson, a Kennesaw resident who nominated Traylor and Hurst as Holiday Heroes.
“They’re so understanding; they know what people are going through almost before we do,” said Ferguson, who met the duo while undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2010 and now volunteers on fundraising efforts for Loving Arms. “They’ve always got smiles on their faces. You never hear about their problems. They’re there for the patients.”
They’d like to be there even more. Loving Arms currently is open three days a week, but Traylor (who still works full time for NGOC at Kennestone Cancer Center) and Hurst (now working there part time) hope to expand it to five. They’re currently helping more than 120 patients on a monthly budget of about $7,000. That money comes from a combination of donations, annual murder mystery theater and silent auction fundraisers and, on this particular afternoon, a holiday craft fair that was being held in the Loving Arms parking lot.
Moving among the tables of books, tote bags and barbecue lunches for sale, the duo paused to greet Kenneth Thomas. Once a patient of Hurst’s, later a volunteer who’d built drawers inside Loving Arms’ growing headquarters, the Acworth man was there to provide moral support.
"I don't know how they do all they do," Thomas said. "They're heroes every day."
