The Woodwinds Health Campus is doing its best to make an unimaginable situation a bit more comfortable for its patients and their families at the new Woodwinds Cancer Center.
Open since March 2015, but still undergoing some changes, the first thing the center needed was radiation oncology, says Karen Moehring, manager of marketing strategy at HealthEast. The community was lacking a convenient radiation center, she says. “In fact, there was a moratorium in the state of Minnesota saying, ‘No more radiation centers,’” because of overcrowding in other areas. So HealthEast went to the legislature and asked for an exception, and it was approved.
“We’re really happy about that,” Moehring says. Often, radiation treatment is five days a week. “And many times, let’s be honest, [the patient is] still working, so you’re trying to fit that into your schedule five days a week for six weeks, maybe.”
Having a location in the Woodbury community makes it possible for patients in the area to undergo treatment while continuing to live their lives. “[It’s] close to home, where you want to be when you’re not feeling your best,” Puneet Cheema, M.D., medical director at HealthEast Cancer Care, says. “We added the latest technology to treat patients with radiation therapy.”
The radiation equipment, called the truebeam linear accelerator, has been up and running since March in the Cancer Center, and it’s more than just a piece of equipment. The room it’s located in has ambient lighting, Moehring says, “and in the ceiling are actually these twinkling stars” so if you are lying on your back during treatment, you have a peaceful scene to get lost in. “You can bring in your iPhone, and you have your favorite music, and they plug it into the control room … they will play your favorite music as you get your treatment.”
The other cancer treatment services they already provided are in their original locations on the Woodwinds Campus. “What will happen is we’re going to move the existing chemotherapy infusion … into where we put the new radiation treatment,” Moehring says, eventually bringing all the cancer treatment services into the new center, starting this summer, in what used to be the primary care clinic.
What makes this new Cancer Center more than just some equipment and construction is how they decided to make the changes. “When we started planning for the Cancer Center on Woodwinds Campus, we said, ‘Who better to ask than our patients?’” Moehring says. They pulled out a select group of patients and gathered them for a focus group, and asked what would make their stay and experience more comfortable. “And they gave us tons of really good feedback,” she says.
One patient said, “Sometimes I’m coming from work and I bring my laptop and I sit and work while I get my infusion,” Moehring recalls. “Great! So we need to make sure we’ve got jacks and Internet so they can continue to do that.”
They also created different patient rooms for different situations, depending on whether family is coming with them for the day. Larger group areas were also created for support groups and community groups to gather.
Part of what Woodwinds has always offered, but created new space for, are their supportive care services, Moehring says. Those include cancer navigators, genetics counseling, psychotherapy counseling and healing touch massage services. All of these are for patients, but Moehring says they hope the community areas will be able to host some wellness-focused events for the broader community, perhaps on topics such as cancer prevention. “How can we do that?” she says. “It’s important that we’re keeping people healthy. We are treating people for cancer, but we hope not to.”
“Education around nutrition, healthy weight and getting preventative screenings are all part of what we help patients do,” Dr. Cheema says. Some cancers don’t care how healthy you are; they hit just the same.
Jill Piechowski, a dental hygienist, was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2014, and started her treatment at the Woodwinds Campus the following September. Her sister was diagnosed two months before her, and when Piechowski started treatment, her sister passed away. With all that was going on in her life during that difficult time, she says the Woodwinds Cancer Center was “wonderful.”
“The first couple weeks after I was diagnosed, I would drive around the hospital. I didn’t even want to go near it,” Piechowski says. But once she started meeting with the genetic counselor—typical for breast cancer that runs in the family—and started chemotherapy, she realized the Woodwinds staff really cared.
Aside from chemotherapy, Piechowski received acupuncture therapy for a year and a half following chemo, for neuropathy that occurred in her hands and feet, a common side effect of chemo that causes pain and tingling due to nerve damage. She had preventative surgery in March 2015, and a double mastectomy in May. She didn’t have to do radiation, but she knows the health campus addition will be beneficial. “I think it will be so much nicer for people who have to do both,” she says. “To be able to go to one place and get it done.”
She says that even though she hasn’t had chemo since January 2015, and only comes in occasionally for checkups and acupuncture, “I walk in and they say, ‘Hi Jill!’ They are just a wonderful group of people. They were so respectful and so kind, and the atmosphere is so upbeat. … You go in there and it would just lighten up.”
Moehring will tell you that was the goal all along at Woodwinds Cancer Center. “When you come in, it’s just this very inviting and very healing atmosphere in there, and that’s important, I think, to patients. They’ve got a lot on their minds.” //
Look up!
In the rotunda of the new Woodwinds Cancer Center, look up and you’ll see a sculpture, called “Trillium: A Gathering of Light,” hanging from the ceiling that patients, workers and family members helped create. “We actually worked with a couple of artists who helped develop, or really pulled together this piece of art,” Karen Moehring says.
Last year, a table was set up in a common space, and it was covered in art supplies. “They had this cool textured paper,” says Jill Piechowski, who participated in the project during her chemo treatment. Each participant got a small piece of glass that they were able to decorate.
“They could do a picture, they could do maybe something they enjoy doing,” Moehring says. And after they were all collected, the artist took [the glass pieces] back and baked them so the pieces fused and their art was permanent. “And that’s what you see hanging,” Moehrings says. “So all this light coming in the window just kind of twinkles on this glass and it’s very lovely.”
Everyone who participated has a small piece of art hanging from the ceiling of the rotunda—a larger piece of art meant to symbolize hope and resiliency in a building where hope is often needed.
Woodwinds Cancer Center’s truebeam linear accelerator for radiation therapy; the room features twinkling stars in the ceiling for peaceful treatments.
For more information about HealthEast Cancer Center, including the Woodwinds Cancer Center, visit the website here.
