Cancer “navigators” help patients cope with disease

• Hearing the words "you've got cancer" is like blithely crossing the street and then getting slammed by a Mack truck - there's no way to prepare for it.
• "Getting a cancer diagnosis is not like being pregnant - a happy event, go get a massage," says Cindy Cantril, breast program coordinator at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae.
• A navigator is someone who takes a cancer patient in hand from the initial diagnosis and supports the patient through treatment, recovery and during the journey back to health - all the while pointing to options and offering guidance on the overwhelming array of life-altering decisions.
• Gordon, chair of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, formerly was head of the National Institutes of Health alternative and complementary medicine program.
• "Virtually everyone with cancer wants to know which complementary and alternative therapies to use," Gordon said in a recent interview.
• "They want to know where to go to find them, and how to put together a program of truly integrative, effective and humane care."
• The goal of CancerGuides, Gordon added, is to train oncology and other health professionals and patient advocates to "help all Americans with cancer and their families to do just that."
• "The treatment is just so focused on the tumor itself, not the whole person," said Walston, 31, who is signed up for the March CancerGuides training.
• The training will not only explain the phases of cancer, but will try to have participants feel what it must be like to experience them: the shock of diagnosis; the puzzle of integrating conventional and complementary care; dealing with side effects of treatment or with recurrences, or facing the issue of death and dying.