A radiation course is usually 15 to 30 trips, once a day on weekdays. Ask the cancer center's patient navigator and your town's Council on Aging first, because both may cost nothing. If you are paying, our wheelchair-accessible transportation is $230 round trip within five miles, then $2 a mile .

How many trips will it be?

Ask the radiation oncology team for the exact number. They know it at the planning scan and will tell you if you ask. Courses range from about one week to eight depending on the cancer and the protocol, and shorter higher-dose schedules are increasingly common, so do not assume six weeks because a relative had six weeks.

Write the number down as round trips. Twenty five treatments is fifty journeys, and that is the real shape of the problem.

Why does this fall apart in week three?

Radiation fatigue is cumulative, and families plan for week one. In the first week most people feel much as before and drive themselves. By the middle of the course the tiredness is a heaviness that does not lift with rest, and the person driving herself in week one is not safe to drive by week four. Depending on where the radiation is aimed there may also be skin reactions, nausea or trouble swallowing.

Plan the back half first and treat the early weeks as the easy part. The same thing happens to the household: meals, laundry and shopping quietly stop in the second half.

What should I try before paying anyone?

Fifty journeys is expensive at any private rate, and some of this is free.

• The cancer center's patient navigator or social worker. Do this at the planning appointment, not in week three. Transportation is one of the barriers navigators exist to remove, and larger centers know about funds that are never published. This is the highest-value call on this page.
• Volunteer driver programs. The American Cancer Society has historically run one. Availability varies by area and year, so ask what is currently operating where you live.
• Your town's Council on Aging. Every Massachusetts town has one. A standing weekday appointment is the easiest kind of trip for them to plan around.
• MassHealth PT-1 rides, arranged through the medical provider. Start as soon as the course is scheduled, because it needs advance notice.
• Medicare Advantage plans. Call the number on the card. Even ten covered trips changes the math.
• On Cape Cod, the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority runs a service specifically for Cape residents going to Boston hospitals.

Most families end up with a mixture: volunteers or a town van some days, family some days, paid rides for the days nobody can cover. That is a good plan, not a compromise.

What does a paid standing schedule cost?

At the base round trip rate, a full 25 session course is $5,750 . If the center is twenty miles away rather than five, mileage adds to every trip.

That is a real number, and for most families it is not the answer for every day. It is frequently the right answer for the back half of the course, the days nobody can take off work, and the week somebody is away. Call with the two addresses and we will quote the exact per-trip figure before you book.

Say at the start that you are booking a course rather than one ride. A standing schedule is far easier for us to staff reliably than a weekly scramble.

Does she need the wheelchair van?

Only if she stays in her own chair. If she can transfer into a car seat and the chair folds, she may not. If the real need is somebody with her rather than the driving, that is an escort booking instead.

Watch for this mid-course: a person who walked in unaided in week one may need a chair by week five. Tell us when that changes rather than letting the driver find out at the door.

What about the steps at home?

A van reaches the driveway and stops there. By the later weeks four concrete steps are the hardest part of the day. Stair assistance is $200 a visit : two trained staff and a motorized stair chair. Tell us how many steps, whether there is a railing, the doorway width and roughly what the person weighs.

What about the rest of the day?

The trip is an hour and the fatigue is all day. What we most often provide in the second half of a course is a few hours of home health aide care two or three days a week: meals cooked, laundry done, a shower with somebody steadying her, groceries in the fridge.

That is $45 an hour , one to eight hours a day, with no minimum contract and no assessment fee. Three hours twice a week is $270. Add it only for the weeks you need it and stop when treatment ends.

Booking radiation transportation

Care Remedy covers eastern and central Massachusetts from offices in Woburn, Brockton and Springfield, and completes around thirty thousand trips a year. Call 781-957-8076 or email info@careremedyinc.com with the home and center addresses, the start date, the number of sessions, the daily appointment time, which days family already has, and the steps at the door.

Book before the first treatment, not after the first bad week. Holding a standing slot is much easier than finding one at short notice on a Tuesday morning.

Your radiation oncology team is the authority on your schedule and what you can safely do during it.