Rare Ray of Hope

“I’m forever grateful for having that mindset,” Gelman says.

While other patient advocacy groups focus on helping patients deal with the medical bureaucracy, Highway of Hope emphasizes the life and wellbeing of the patient and his family. Gelman compares the phenomenon to two Henrys in American history, Henry Berg, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Henry Ford, who invented the tractor.

“Who did more for horses?” he asks rhetorically. “The other organizations look at the medical side of the patient,” Gelman continues, “while at Highway of Hope, we look at the whole patient and know that there is more to the patient than his medical condition. There is his quality of life, his job, his ability to interact with society. When they have this, that gives them a will to fight, despite their condition.”

He mentions two people who contacted him, both of whom lost a leg to cancer. One person had a job as a street sweeper. He liked his job and wanted to maintain it, and his employer had promised that if he got fitted with a prosthetic leg and did the necessary therapy, he would hire him back. That gave the patient the motivation to go through the process.