Bend woman’s cancer fight gets ‘Angel Flight’

For Janee Finn, a Bend woman battling uterine cancer, just getting to the doctor can be a challenge. Friday morning, for the second time in her life, she boarded an Angel Flight, a donated private plane, to take her to Portland.

“I have uterine cancer and this is my third set of treatments,” Finn said.

Her doctor is 162 miles away, in Portland, and Janee doesn’t own a car.

“One of the hardest things of this journey is to accept help and to ask for help,” she said.

Through Angel Flight, she met pilot Eylan Goldman Friday morning. He’s donating his time, his plane and fuel to help.

“I know that she is stressed about, you know, the treatment that she has to take and that’s enough stress as is, let alone how she has to get there,” Goldman said.

Friday’s treatment, hopefully her last, involves internal radiation.

“You don’t feel violated — that’s not the word I want to use but very … I’d rather go to the dentist, let’s put it that way,” Janee said with a laugh.

With blue skies overhead, Janee and Eylan take off, heading over the Cascades.

“The whole flight acts as a complete distraction in an otherwise could be stressful world. So that’s a nice part of it,” Goldman said.

“It’s soothing,” Finn said. “It just takes away, kind of melts away all that stress of getting from there to here.”

Goldman donates his time as the pilot. His company, Cathy’s Cleaners in Bend, pays around $400 for the fuel and wear and tear on the plane.

Janee doesn’t have any family in the area to ask for help; her closest relative is in Massachusetts.

To learn more, visit: http://www.angelflight.org/