Angels Among Us> Pilots close gap between seriously ill patients, advanced treatment

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Elisabeth-Ashley “Punki” Belcher has the rare bone disease lymphangiomatosis. It’s only the 26th documented case in the world.

The condition leaves the 12-year-old Camden girl’s bones extremely brittle. She broke one leg at ages 4, 5, 6, and 7 before having it amputated below the knee in 1996 at age 8. She also has scoliosis of the back.

Patricia Guala, Punki’s mother, is an epileptic and can’t drive. Yet she has managed to take her daughter more than a dozen times for treatment to the Shriners Hospital in Springfield, Mass. And they are able to make the journey and return home to Maine the same day thanks to a unique group of kind-hearted, conscientious pilots in the Northeast.

Founded in 1996, Angel Flight is a volunteer organization that provides free air and ground transportation for adults and children seeking lifesaving medical attention throughout the United States. The Massachusetts-based group isn’t an ambulance service; rather it is for medically stable and ambulatory patients and their families.

In its short existence, Angel Flight’s volunteer pilots have flown more than 3,000 missions in their own planes. The organization has proven a boon to Maine’s medical communities.

“The main factor is the huge distances that patients and their families need to cover to get the care they need,” said Jim Harnar, vice president of public affairs for the Maine Hospital Association. “Angel Flight is invaluable in helping to shrink these distances with their flights.”

For Patricia Guala and her daughter Punki, Angel Flight has been a blessing. They fly from Owls Head to Westfield, Mass., before being driven to the Shriners Hospital.

“If it wasn’t for Angel Flight, I’d be stuck,” Guala said. “You can’t always depend on a family member. It’s been quite a blessing for my husband, with his schedule. It saves on hiring a baby sitter to take care of our other daughter, Anni. It’s one less kid to pull out of school.”

Punki is no fan of flying (“I don’t like hanging in the air”) but she copes by listening to her Walkman, reading and bringing along her Ricky the Monkey Beanie.

Punki is touched by the generosity of the pilots and other people who volunteer for Angel Flight.

“Some families have low incomes and live far away from the doctors and hospitals,” the girl said. “It’s great that people are willing to bring people they don’t even know someplace, that they’re willing to donate the time.”

Out of reach

Having the finest health care available means little if patients can’t get to where the services are.

This is an especially serious problem in a largely rural state like Maine, where it takes eight hours to drive from Fort Kent to Kittery and commuter flights are few and far between.

It’s precisely this problem which Larry Camerlin wanted to address when he founded Angel Flight. The former Franciscan friar had owned and run an ambulance service for 12 years, and he had seen how people struggled to get the care they needed.

“I knew how difficult it was for people to get to a hospital in Boston from 10 to 15 minutes away, because they were so weak,” he recalled from Angel Flight’s Lawrence Municipal Airport headquarters in North Andover, Mass. “So how does someone go from Frenchville to Portland? I knew there was a tremendous need, especially in rural communities.”

After selling his business, Camerlin was looking for a way to give something back in the health-care field. A pilot himself, he was confident he could find the volunteer pilots necessary to make Angel Flight work.

“I knew pilots are a terrific group of people,” he said. “Unless they are flying constantly for business, a lot of them were looking for reasons to fly. To combine their love of flying with helping to save someone’s life would be tremendous.”

In 3 1/2 years, Angel Flight has grown to 580 volunteer pilots, “Ground Angels,” and administrative staff, who make the 24-hour-a-day service run. Pilots, who either own or rent their planes, pay for their own expenses, which Camerlin estimated can range from $300 to $2,500 per mission, depending on the distance involved.

Those eligible for the group’s services are patients and families whose resources do not permit them to travel by commercial airlines to get needed diagnosis or treatment. Angel Flight also accepts requests from patients and families who are unable to use public transportation because of their medical condition or who live in remote areas where such transportation is not available. Camerlin estimated that 90 percent of Angel Flight’s missions involve repeat patients.

In addition, emergency flights are available for persons who need to visit critically ill or injured family members, and patients needing organ transplants.

Pilots lending a hand

Most Angel Flights start early in the morning at the airport closest to the patient’s home. Many will drive an hour or two to the airport, but that’s still preferable to the lengthy drive to Boston, the most frequent destination for advanced health-care services.

On this recent morning, Jim Platz taxis his Cessna 414 into the General Aviation terminal at Bangor International Airport. He’s there to pick up Joshua Lund and his mother, Nancy, of East Machias.

Platz, an engineer from Auburn, got involved with Angel Flight in late 1996 after seeing a flier on an airport bulletin board. He estimated that he has flown more than 100 missions.

“I get pleasure out of helping them out in a small way in what’s usually a pretty horrible ordeal,” Platz said. “Most have pretty sad medical situations, and this just helps them out a little bit.”

Nancy Lund echoed Platz’s sentiment. It may be a two-hour drive to Bangor for her and her 9-year-old son, Joshua, but that’s better than the eight- to nine-hour trip one way to Boston, which she would have to do over two days because Joshua also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Joshua got badly burned on his stomach, back and right arm last March when his shirt caught on fire. He was shipped first to Maine Medical Center in Portland, then on to the Shriners Hospital in Boston for a 25-day stay. That’s where the Lunds first learned about Angel Flight, after being offered a flight home when Joshua was discharged.

That was Joshua’s first flight, and Nancy’s first in 25 years. He handled it better than she did.

“It was quite intimidating,” Nancy recalled. “My father picked us up, and he thought I was going to faint. He laughed all the way to Harrington.”

All told, the Lunds have taken six Angel Flights. Joshua is headed back to Shriners today for his bimonthly checkup. Nancy has become more relaxed on the flights, but her son is downright enthusiastic, as he heads to the cockpit to sit beside Platz.

“Joshua absolutely loves flying,” his mother said. “He has a hard time keeping his hands in his lap, because he wants to help awfully bad. Flying back and forth gives him something to look forward to. This is the only doctor’s appointment I don’t have to drag him to.”

Platz is accustomed to having young help up front, as 47 percent of Angel Flight patients are children with life-threatening cancer, severe burns or crippling diseases. This is sometimes hard for Platz, the father of two, to digest.

“There are some kids that were dealt pretty unfair medical conditions,” he said. “That can get to you. You have to pay attention to what you’re doing, because it’s pretty tough with the kids.”

Occasionally, flights are scrubbed because of weather conditions, but Angel Flight helps to make other arrangements.

“One time, because of a thunderstorm, Angel Flight arranged for us to come back in a bigger [commercial] plane,” Nancy recalled. “A Ground Angel picked us up, picked up our tickets and got us to the gate. I thought it was unreal myself.”

Angel Flight has been a godsend for Nancy, who works, goes to school and is the single mother of three special-needs children.

“I think the service is super,” she said. “It’s made it so much easier to deal with. Everyone is so supernice. They make sure that we’re all set, that someone is coming to pick us up, and to make sure the pilot is set for the return trip.”

Platz in his eight-passenger Cessna sets down in Rockland to pick up two more passengers. While the pilot goes inside the terminal, Nancy cautions Joshua, “Don’t touch. Don’t touch.” He shoots back an evil grin.

Vikki Baxter of Appleton and her 6-year-old daughter, Randi, enter the plane. Joshua needs to leave the cockpit as Platz redistributes the weight inside the aircraft, so the boy settles in front of the VCR to watch the Disney film “Mulan.”

Randi was only 13 months old when a 4-year-old playing with matches set her playpen on fire. She’s been traveling to Shriners for five years, for skin grafts and other surgeries.

For the first three years, Vikki drove Randi, a four-hour trip one way.

“People had to take days off from work so we could get down there,” Vikki explained. “We did it all in one day. We had to make sure we had the money to do it. We don’t have those worries anymore.”

For the past two years, they’ve flown on Angel Flights, which has meant arriving home about six hours after leaving. Randi has to go to Shriners three to four times a year for checkups, like today, and twice a year for surgeries.

“It’s meant the world to us,” Vikki said. “There’s no worries. We call them, and they set it all up. We tell them the date and when we have to be there. It makes Randi feel better that she doesn’t have to ride that long distance. It doesn’t wear her out as much.”

Shortly over two hours after leaving Bangor, Platz lands at Logan International Airport in Boston. The two families hop onto the Shriners’ shuttle van, and the pilot turns around and heads home. Other pilots have been arranged for the Lunds’ and Baxters’ return flights.

Platz said patients and their families are really grateful for his help.

“It would be a tremendous burden to get where they’re going, and sometimes impossible,” he said. “It’s a real relief to not have to worry about this component of their treatment.”

Platz said that one of the busiest areas for Angel Flights is northern Aroostook County.

Donna Voisine of Fort Kent has been flying out of Presque Isle during her two-year battle against breast and bone cancer. She’s taken about 15 Angel Flights since May 1997, when an oncology nurse told her about the service. She leaves Presque Isle at 8:30 a.m. for treatment at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and is back by 7 p.m.

Voisine said it would have been impossible for her to get such treatment without Angel Flight.

“There’s no way I could afford to fly to Boston,” she said. “It’s $356 to Boston, and my husband always comes with me. I had to quit work when I started taking chemo[therapy], so we went from being a two- to a one-income family. Financially, illness is a big drain. They’ve really helped us out so, so much. I don’t have to stress about the money, and I’m home that night.”

Voisine has enjoyed an 18-month remission from her cancer, although there is a problem now with her lung. She is thankful to Angel Flight for all their help.

“They think of everything,” she said. “They checked on me in Boston and at home. They care so much about the people.”

Angel Flight has also aided Alan Daigle of St. David in his 10-year battle with astrocytoma, a recurring brain tumor, as their pilots have flown him to Boston for the past three-plus years to get his monthly treatments at Dana Farber. He thanks the organization for making such arduous treatment easier to handle.

“It’s a 10-hour drive for us, and we still wouldn’t make it,” he said. “We would have to leave a day early and stay in a hotel, and my wife would have to take the day off. We save a lot of money. We’re grateful for these people. You won’t find too many services like that.”

Daigle is taking part in the trial of a new chemotherapy drug.

“The last time, they showed us that the tumor had shrunk, which is the best news I’ve had in 10 years,” he said.

Opportunity to help

So why do Angel Flight pilots do it? Jim Hopkinson, who has flown 20 missions for the group, gives credit to Camerlin’s vision.

“It’s ingenious, because all pilots need to fly regularly to maintain proficiency and this recognizes that there are empty seats beside me,” said the West Bath attorney. “It’s not just alone time. It’s an opportunity to help somebody, particularly those who need the convenience of a flight to an airport near to them. It’s an opportunity to provide the kind of service that these airplanes were made to provide, to go to out-of-the-way destinations and get people in close to the services they need.”

Shawn Lyden of Portland got involved with Angel Flight because he owns a plane with Hopkinson. He went on flights with Hopkinson and got hooked about 1 1/2 years ago. He tries to fly two missions a month, and has flown 15-20 so far.

“It’s a way of giving back that a lot of people can’t do,” said the mortgage banker. “It gives me a lot of flying time. And every time I do a flight, it makes my day. You realize how grateful people are. It’s a win-win situation for all people.”

Camerlin said his organization’s greatest need is for donations, to pay for the flight coordination program, the pilot recruitment meetings and outreach, and the patient education and outreach program.

“And, of course, we always need more pilots,” he added.

There are many more patients in Maine than there are volunteer pilots. So Hopkinson made his case for pilots to join Angel Flight.

“Most pilots are pretty giving, caring folks,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to fly into Logan Airport without having to pay Boston landing fees. It’s good flying, because you’re required to be on a flight plan, like any chartered operation. It’s a good way to hone their skills. All pilots are learners, who want to learn more about what they do.”

For those interested in becoming Angel Flight volunteers, an informational meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2, in the main terminal of Bangor International Airport. Follow the signs to the meeting site.

For further information on helping Angel Flight or to arrange a flight, call (978) 794-6868.