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Songwriters’ Jam to benefit families  by Mary Helen Yarborough Public Relations The waiting room is a cold and indifferent place for those relegated there to await word of a critically ill loved one. The overhead lights are blinding to weary eyes. In a dark corner, a phone rings and some tired soul answers it and blurts out a family’s name. It’s not yours. You adjust in a vinyl covered straight chair and wait, staring blankly at a low-volume TV set, glancing periodically at the reception desk hoping for any sign that conditions are changing.   Time drags and numbness takes over during what seems like an eternity. The waiting room job does not observe holidays.   At any given hour in the day, many of us are recruited by emotional tie or duty to the task of waiting for the inevitable—the death of a mother, father, sister, brother, child, spouse or friend. Some of us are lucky, and the inevitable is postponed.   One woman’s own experience has turned to help for others in the same situation. Community Helpers, a Charleston charity, helps provide a little help to families waiting in places like a hospital waiting room.    Teresa Tidestrom, a dispatcher for Meducare, knows too well the vacant, painful existence of a hospital waiting room. She knows about the ups and downs, encouragement of recovery and the devastation of a bad prognosis. She lost her mother, Betty Mellis, to bone and breast cancer in June. She waited, like many others, in a room for weeks.   “[My mother] spent 10 days on the floor,” said Tidestrom. “The waiting room is the loneliest place a person can be, especially if you know your loved one is going to pass away.”   Tidestrom had spent decades helping her mother in her battle against breast cancer, which went into remission only to return as bone cancer in 1991. Several years ago, she and her mother started a charity called Community Helpers to help extend a little support to families in hospital waiting rooms.   Working with local hospice organizations, hospital staff at MUSC, and other organizations, Community Helpers finds out who is likely to spend extended time in a waiting room. Community Helpers raises money that is used to assemble care packages for family members and friends of patients based on the understanding that people consumed with worry for someone else tend to forget their own needs. The group provides items such as toothbrushes, toiletries, or something to eat.   “It’s a grassroots charity aimed at helping people,” Tidestrom said. “We work strictly in the Charleston area. We have cooked Thanksgiving dinners for hospice families and we’ve even bought clothes and school supplies for children.”   Community Helpers has 12 volunteers and no paid employees.   To help raise money, Community Helpers is holding its first Songwriters’ Jam, 7 p.m. Nov. 25, at The Plex in North Charleston. The Plex is donating the facility, and 10 local musical artists will perform 15-minute sets. The jam also will be aired on The Bridge at 105.5 FM radio.   In addition, tickets for drawings are being sold. Prizes include a computer system and a $50 Citadel Mall gift certificate. The Songwriters' Jam is expected to become an annual event.   The $10 admission goes directly to benefit the charity.   Anyone wishing to support the charity could visit http://www.communityhelpersonline.org, or contact Tidestrom at 792-5638, 278-5285, or e-mail tidesttm@musc.edu.     Friday, Nov. 24, 2006 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.