Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND – Friday morning the Washakie Hospital Foundation donated a chemotherapy bell to the Worland Banner Health Washakie Medical Center chemotherapy infusion room to help patients celebrate the end of their chemotherapy treatments.

When a cancer patient receives their final treatment they ring the bell to announce to the world that their treatments are finally over. Washakie Hospital Foundation member Keith Van Brunt stated that the current cord attached to the bell will be removed due to the need to keep everything sterile. He stated that a compromise was made and that for each particular patient to ring the bell there will be a graduation tassel in the color of the patient's type of cancer. For example a patient with breast cancer would have a pink tassel attached to the bell to ring it. The patient will then be able to take the tassel home with them.

Worland Banner Washakie Medical Center Jay Stallings thanked the Washakie Hospital Foundation members present and added that their gift contributes to the hospital being the finest around. Stallings also thanked all staff present for their hard work and care for their patients.

The money to pay for the bell came out of the Washakie Hospital Foundation general fund. According to Van Brunt, the general fund was created at the inception of the foundation and the foundation uses the interest to purchase items like the bell and also to fund the fundraisers which generate money for the cancer fund.

"The Washakie Hospital Foundation started long before Banner Health, it started long before when Lutheran was here; it's actually part of the Washakie Hospital as a county entity. Our goal here initially was to raise money to help the hospital with funding projects, i.e: equipment, televisions, patient comfort type things. But since then we have transitioned away from that and we have the cancer fund and the general fund. Under the cancer fund we usually give people who are receiving cancer therapies, within not only Washakie County but within the Big Horn Basin, $500 gifts to help them offset some of the expenditures that you can't recoup with insurance, such as travel, food, lodging, all that good stuff," Van Brunt said.

All money raised by the fundraisers goes directly into the cancer fund and is not used for anything other than helping cancer patients.

Any and all donations given to the Washakie Hospital Foundation stays in the Big Horn Basin. Donations made to the general fund are used for suicide prevention and other areas the foundation can assist. Donations made to the cancer fund go to area residents battling cancer.