Nurse Navigators

There is a special dedicated person you get at the start of this process called the Nurse Navigator. Per Google, this role is for the following:

Patient Advocacy: Acts as a liaison between patients and the healthcare team, ensuring patient needs, preferences, and concerns are addressed.

Care Coordination: Helps schedule appointments, manage referrals, and streamline communication between specialists, primary care providers, and support services.

Education and Support: Provides patients and their families with information about their diagnosis, treatment options, and care plans.

Emotional Support: Offers counseling and emotional support during difficult medical journeys.

Resource Navigation: Connects patients with financial assistance programs, support groups, and community resources.

I would like to more fondly refer to her as my Nurse Ninja. My Ninja’s name is Alicia, and she has been my first and only contact post the portal announcement. She is like the friendly greeter at CancerMart and she has been amazing so far. I suspect we will be besties very soon. I see this role as like the mother who is there to keep everything and everyone in this game organized, lugging around a bag full of random hair ties, Cheetos, band aids, ChapStick, and maybe Fireball shots.

Tomorrow is my surgical consult, which is expected to be a two-to-three-hour visit. This is where my treatment plan will be laid out and surgery date set. I have my handy dandy binder ready with all my well thought out questions and a wad of tissues if needed. Those may be more for my mother. I may overwhelm the doctor with the level of preplanning I have done already done for her. If you know me, you know I always have a spreadsheet for the occasion.

My mother has already declared me the worst patient ever before we have even crossed the threshold of the cancer center. I passed a trash can alongside the road today with a pink lid and a ribbon on the side and I firmly declared at that time that I did not want cancer swag. I know folks love to fill up with ribbons, socks, tatas signs, and all the other appropriate flare, but I feel like treating this as a holiday theme party allows this to become who I am, and I do not want this to define me as a person. I do not want to be a billboard for this word when I walk into a public place. I know some may find this weird, but in reality, I am not sick. I simply have a foreign object that is being kindly escorted out the front porch. I will accept a shirt, maybe. I really just want house plants.