A Place For Hope: Chapter 9
In Chapter 9, CTCA nurse Michelle Bregenzer talks about how she continues to care for Lynette in the CTCA Survivorship Support Program. "Here, we will take care of you from the top of your head all the way down to your toes," Bregenzer says.
CTCA interventional pulmonologist Dr. Daniel Nader reinforces the importance of comprehensive follow up care once patients have completed treatment.
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Michelle Bregenzer (nurse): Well, like Lynette I haven’t seen her in nine years and now I get to take care of her in after care. So now I get to take care of any issues that come up from either her treatment or her cancer. So you never end your care, ever. There’s a lot of issues that don’t get addressed after the patients are done, plus they are coming just for their re-evaluations. So they are more focused on ‘are my scans still going to be good, are my tumor markers still going to be good’, and they forget to tell the doctor certain things that are, certain issues that have come up and that’s where we can step in and we remind them that we are here. We will take care of you from the top of your head all the way down to your toes.
Loretta Swan: The after care was something that I could not have imagined. It answered so many of the questions that I had in my mind.
Daniel Nader: It’s very important that we have good follow up for our patients because we know that cancer is a disease that we may stomp it out temporarily but it will try to raise it’s ugly head again, and so we want to be right on top of it. We don’t want any surprises. So we have a very comprehensive follow up program for all of our patients. I see them on an every three month basis and so that follow up visit includes diagnostic evaluation, my physical examination of the patients and then assessing them to see how they are doing, to make sure that we are not having any evidence of recurrent disease.