When our patients come in and they have the word cancer, you know, coming at them, it gets overwhelming.

As the oncology nurse navigator, I wanna make sure that they understand their treatment plan and disease process.

Even though we're a smaller hospital, we still have access to these same doctors that are treating patients in Lexington.

They travel down to, you know, Richmond. And then we have our nurses, they have their certification in oncology doing those treatments, able to handle emergencies just as well as, you know, any other facility.

It makes me feel proud that I form a relationship with these patients. I want them to see that they have somebody they can go to. Crystal's right here when I need her. So it makes me feel really good that I'm here for my oncology patients.

I wanna ensure that they understand the whole process, make sure that they don't have any barriers that may inhibit their treatment plan. It could be financial, medications, and also transportation back and forth for their treatments.

You know, this is such a stressful time. I'm here to make life a little bit less stressful.

When a patient has a suspicious lesion that could represent a skin cancer or if it was a biopsy proven skin cancer, oftentimes either the primary care physician or the dermatologist will send you to us to discuss your options because they're not all surgical. Sometimes radiation, immunotherapy, or even chemotherapy are all options. It really depends upon the size of the cancer, the location of the cancer, and the patient's status and what they wish as their desires to treat that cancer.

In the treatment of skin cancer, we look at a multidisciplinary approach. So a lot of times surgery is the preferred option or approach or approach and many times that's all you need. But if it gets to the point where they're talking about more extensive surgery, disfiguring surgery, which requires reconstructive surgery, removal of parts of your ear or nose, then that's where the benefit multidisciplinary team that we have here at Baptist Health, where we have the benefit of reconstructive surgeons who can perform the excision and the reconstruction, we have the option of radiation, that treatment modality avoid surgery in many cases, that's where it might benefit having a multidisciplinary approach and see what other alternatives of therapy there are for skin cancer.

I think it's our responsibility to let the patients know what all those treatments are so they can make an informed decision on how they wanna proceed.

Here at Baptist Health, we offer a breastfeeding one on one class, and that's very important if you wanna breastfeed.

Having that class will make you you more comfortable when you come into the hospital, and you will relax better and have a better bonding with your baby and not have so much anxiety.

During the breastfeeding class, brand new moms, they never even held a baby, let alone trying to breastfeed a baby. So I use dolls as props, and I show them different positions. That makes a very big difference with the mom having that knowledge and being comfortable holding the baby correctly.

They really appreciate that because they know they don't know what they're doing. They want somebody just tell me how to do it correctly.

The moms I'm seeing up on the floor after they deliver, the ones that have my class, they are so When I come in the room, they remember me. They smile. They're more relaxed. They're enjoying the process of breastfeeding instead of having so much anxiety.

Is my baby getting enough? Why is the baby acting hungry on the second day? Because they already know why. They take the class during their last trimester, and they learn it, and they remember, oh, I remember her talking about this in the class.

The baby's gonna do this. And I find I go in the room, and they're smiling. They're relaxed. They're not stressed out, and they are able to really enjoy this special bonding time with their baby.

A primary care provider is a provider that is able to address most general health needs as well as helps coordinate and collaborates with others' physicians and specialists to help address the patient's needs. It is very important that you see your primary care provider annually based on the fact that your health risk can change from year to year. So during an annual physical, we can do various testing testing to help assess what patients may be facing. They might not be able to see on the outside a problem that's going on the inside. Hypertension is a big thing that often goes unnoticed. A lot of times, blood pressure can be very elevated and patients have no idea idea until a complication arises. During your annual physical, we can do annual fasting labs, which helps us check cholesterol screening as well as your liver and kidney function, as well as glucose, and see if we're maybe diabetic or prediabetic.

One of the biggest things that affect our physical health is our mental health. And so addressing those needs are just as important as addressing any physical needs that'll be coming up as their annual physical. Being a provider at Baptist gives us access to more resources to help address patients' needs, such as advanced imaging, access to specialists, and also different ancillary services like physical therapy. We also have community health workers that can help support the patients in certain situations where they might need extra assistance.

Treating patients in primary care is very rewarding for me because I enjoy getting to know my patients, developing that one on one patient relationship, and seeing life on life changes that improve people's health.

A coronary artery calcium scan is a special CAT scan that looks at the plaque buildup in a patient's coronary arteries, and we decide when a patient may benefit from a CAC when they have risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease. Such risk factors may include obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, or a family history of heart disease.

The higher a calcium score is, the higher a person's risk of future cardiovascular events. A score of over four hundred is a high calcium score and correlates with a high risk of future cardiovascular events, typically within the next five years. If someone comes back with an elevated coronary calcium score, it can, one, prompt us to take additional medications such as statins to help lower LDL and reduce inflammation. Another big aspect that it can change is is someone might know more about the risk, know that there's atherosclerosis there, and prompt them to make lifestyle changes. So better diet, more exercise, etcetera.

So for any patients that are on the fence about having the CAC scan, it is a pain free exam. It helps us to minimize those risk factors earlier rather than later.

It is important to detect lung cancer early because it affects long term survival of patients.

If we can diagnose a cancer in the earliest of stages, the chance of cure approaches ninety percent.

We at Baptist Health decided that we were going to focus on diagnosing patients earlier, and that's where some of our newer technology such as ion bronchoscopy or robotic bronchoscopy allows us to biopsy smaller and smaller and smaller nodules. It's a special platform that uses a robot and GPS technology just like is in your car, except it's based on a CT scan. And in conjunction with the three d c arm or cone beam c arm, we are able to accurately biopsy nodules as small as six millimeters over the entirety of the surface of the lung. Once nodules approach a centimeter, that changes their stage.

And if we can accurately diagnose nodules that are less than a centimeter, we have given that patient the best chance for cure. And so I am so excited because that allows me to accurately diagnose patients at a much earlier stage and get them treated.