This Saturday (June 6) is National Cancer Survivors Day. Fittingly, St. Tammany Health System and its partners at Ochsner will cut the ribbon the very next day on the new St. Tammany Cancer Center, a campus of Ochsner Medical, at the intersection of Interstate 12 and Highway 21 in Covington.
To mark the occasion, STHS Manager of Cancer Services Lindsay Gomez visited The Lake 94.7 FM recently to discuss the new, three-story, $50 million facility and some of the expanded services it will provide to the Northshore community.
Listen to Lindsay’s discussion with The Lake morning host Charles Dowdy in the embedded audio player below or at The Lake website. You can also scroll down to read an edited transcript of their chat.
Charles Dowdy: Alright we have guests in the studio. Tim (San Fillippo) is here from St. Tammany Health System. He has brought along Lindsay Gomez. Did I get that right?
Lindsay Gomez: That is correct.
Charles: Ok, tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Lindsay: I am the manager of cancer services over at St. Tammany Cancer Center. We are currently working on rebuilding our survivorship and navigation program to help the quality of life for our patients.
Charles: And how did you end up in this job? Is this what you trained for originally? Is this kind of something you found as you went through nursing or doctoring or what?
Lindsay: I started off in oncology 16 years ago on the floor. Wanted to dive into more of the chemotherapy side of things.
Tim: She’s a Southeastern graduate.
Lindsay: Yes, bachelor of science from Southeastern Louisiana University and a minor in biology. I wanted to get my certifications for chemotherapy and biotherapy, and also immunotherapy. That followed with an oncology certification. So I ended up on 3 East (at St. Tammany Parish Hospital), starting there and moved into the infusion center, actually giving the chemo to our patients. Then I got the opportunity to manage an oncology clinic. I am well rounded.
Charles: And your title now is?
Lindsay: Manager of Cancer Services.
Charles: And what does that title mean? I think I know but you tell me.
Lindsay: Basically, I am responsible for the operations of our colleagues over at the St. Tammany side of the St. Tammany Cancer Center but also navigating our patients through care and building the new survivorship program within our integrative oncology space.
Charles: And this is part of that new, big, shiny building, right?
Lindsay: Yes.
Charles: And have you gotten to go in it?
Lindsay: Of course! I am moved in. It’s beautiful
Charles: As far as patients go, are they in there as well now?
Lindsay: Our grand opening will be June 14.
Charles: Let’s talk about what you do though. There is a day (coming up). What is that?
Lindsay: Yes, National Cancer Survivors Day. We missed a little bit of that last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, we are hoping to get the team together and celebrate cancer survivors and raise awareness later in the fall. Survivors day is June 6. We usually have our survivor’s day in June. It is very hot. We like our patients and our healthcare professionals to enjoy that time, so we do it more towards the end of the fall now. There are more dates to come for that. We usually post it at St. Tammany Cancer Center and on social media when that will happen.
Charles: OK, and this is all just part of the journey. I mean it truly is a journey of treatment, is it not?
Lindsay: Yes, it is. It is basically a celebration for our caregivers, a celebration for our cancer survivors of course, but our healthcare professionals. It is an outreach to the community. It is also a call to action for our community to raise awareness for different resources and provide different programs and research and increase public awareness.
Charles: So, talk to me a little about this new facility and why this matters. I mean, I know you are doing it because it is going to improve things. Tell me how. What is that about?
Lindsay: Our goal is to navigate our patients through the continuum of care all the way through survivorship. Our survivorship program is so important. Our survivors, they face a lot of challenges after treatment. Patients usually say, “Oh, I am done after treatment.” No, that is not the case. They experience long-term side effects. They experience emotional, psychological concerns. The fear of reoccurrence happens. They have these long-term side effects that they are not aware of later on, and we hope to collaborate teams together with our primary care providers and our APP and integrative oncology that we’re working on hiring, and having an open team with all our providers, all of us on the same page with our patients and how to provide that care for them all the way through survivorship.
Charles: What sets you guys apart from other folks?
Lindsay: Well as you know we have a partnership between Ochsner and St Tammany Health System. We have been partners since 2014. We have a comprehensive care team that focuses on patient-centered care. We have tumor boards, lung conference, GI conference, general conference, cancer committee – we have a ton of committees that we work together with to provide a multidisciplinary treatment planning. We collaborate care with all providers, whether it is med oncology, surgical oncology, radiation oncology or supportive care. We have easy access to clinical trials.
We are also very excited, I am extremely excited, about our new program at the Cancer Center which involves integrative medicine. For those of you who don’t know what integrative medicine entails, the focus is on the whole person. It is including mind, body and spirit. We have several treatments that are available in that area, mainly focusing on meditation, tai chi, yoga, acupuncture. Our acupuncturist can do a lot of things when it comes to our patients for nausea and vomiting, peripheral neuropathy. These are those side effects that patients experience during chemotherapy. We also have a full-time clinical psychologist that specializes in the needs of our oncology patients.
Charles: Can we talk about a success story? Do you have one you could share?
Lindsay: I have plenty. But there’s one in particular close to my heart. I had a male patient come in, back in 2015, and he walked in and walls were all the way up – very angry, as expected. I was proceeding to go over his treatment with him. I tell all of my patients from A to Z what I am doing as I am doing it. To kind of decrease their fear. I finally just looked at him, I sat down at eye level and said ‘Look, whether you like it or not, you and me are going to be very good friends.’ After that I started to see some of the walls coming down and was able to connect with him. You know, as a nurse our focus is to adapt to our patients and their feelings. Those feelings were based off of fear. To make a long story short, he hasn’t had treatment in five years. He is five years in remission, and I was able to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary with him. We are dear friends to this day. The moral of the story is our patients become family. They rely on us for everything, whether it is just to get them through this emotional, vulnerable, scary time in their life, and I love being a part of that.
Charles: Fantastic. Yes, that is good stuff and surely their mental health and their mental condition influences their treatment. There is no question that has got to be the case, right?
Lindsay: Yes.
Charles: Ok, well that is good stull and we certainly enjoyed chatting with Lindsay. You, Tim, I think that you guys are hiring?
Tim: Yes, I can tell you that opportunities abound at St. Tammany Health System. I just learned about an Allied Health walk-in interview event that is going to be Wednesday. It is coming up on the 16th from 1 o’clock to 4 pm at our new tower event center. There is more information at sttammany.health/alliedcareers. That has more details and a list of positions we are looking for and just a few more resources on why St. Tammany Health System needs to be your family, too.
Charles: Good stuff. Thank you both for the visit, I hope you guys have a great weekend.