Denton County Living Well Magazine January/February 2016 | Page 44

Your Life…Your Health…
Your Choice…

H

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

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DENTON COUNTY Living Well Magazine | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

stress was unmanageable.
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 Health-Sync 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 \