Dallas County Living Well Magazine Summer 2014 | Page 48

Your Life…Your Health…Your Choice…

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Courtesy Health-Sync, Cancer Navigation

aving survived a heart attack and stent
surgery, we were well prepared for
anything that came our way. Or so we
thought. We fell in love 16 years ago,
raised a blended family together and were
reaching toward our dreams. Lung cancer wasn’t supposed
to enter the picture. One minute we were living our life and
the next minute we were fighting for it.
The delivery of the news was so sterile and impersonal.
We were supposed to put our lives in the hands of a physician who told us it was stage III cancer over the phone and
then told us to wait two weeks? How were we supposed to
tell our families? I would watch him sleep at night and wonder, how do we get through this? The stress was unmanageable.

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North Dallas Living Well Magazine • Summer 2014

Our bright spot came when my close friend Trina told us
about an independent cancer navigator and patient advocate. She explained that this was someone who worked on
our behalf. Was this what we needed? I wasn’t sure, but I
knew we had to do something. Tina Withrow with HealthSync contacted us immediately and asked if she could meet
with us in person and we agreed. She came to our house!
She explained that she was an advocate/cancer navigator
with Health-Sync and that she was independent of all hospitals and physicians––a true advocate for patients and their
families. She listened to our concerns and then she told us
what we could expect through this frightening journey of
cancer.
“It is vital that cancer survivors and those persons in a
medical crisis have a say in their treatment options. We