Pathfinder.
above: Want to pioneer an uncharted territory? Can you bushwhack coast to coast?
What, you weren’t an Eagle Scout? You didn’t get an outdoors way-finding award in Girl Scouts? You weren’t ever “on point” in your military patrol? No problem. New molecular knowledge, new genetic assays and diagnostic gear, and new treatments mean that prior years’ training and older maps wouldn’t be best anyway, for cancer caregiving.
Why? Because both cancer patient-ship and cancer caregiving are partly about finding new paths. And you can help.
At a “focus group” meeting last week, I heard another caregiver tell the tale of his and his loved one’s struggles to see clearly where they were supposed to be and go. Both patient and spouse were frustrated by the physical tangle of multiple medical buildings. (We get our cancer care at a research-heavy, globally known hospital, so having a veteran, Ph.D.-bearing nursing researcher ask for and consider caregivers’ inputs is a benefit. Our meeting was mustered up towards helping the staff’s writing a new manual for caregivers of stem cell transplant patients.)
That fellow-traveler spouse-caregiver admitted geographic and sensory confusion - despite prior-years professional training in architecture and now working in landscape design. So if even spatially-oriented people like him are challenged by corridors, corners, and connections in care centers, then imagine the brain-tangle for our cancer patients!
above: Who’s overlooking your cancer patient’s care path?
above: Who? Who?
What can we caregivers do, to help define and find that best-functioning cancer-journey physical path?
1. Thinking Ahead. Maybe worry, fatigue, nausea, “chemobrain,” depression, frustration, and/or pain inhibit your patient’s geo-thinking. Caregivers can conceive the right route. Checklists are cool. Do you believe that bloodwork (i.e., another lab draw and blood processing) is needed on arrival? Feel like pharmacy-fetching is foretold, before leaving? Two heads are better than one!
2. Measuring Motion. Is your patient weary, feeble, tangled with mobile intravenous infusion bags, or otherwise not nice with traversing distances? You better become the detective of the close-in, overhead-covered drop-off points. You’re the decider of disabled-folks parking.
3. Maybe Meet-Ups? Parking can be pleasant, outside autos. Could your cancer patient be pleased by letting you go for pharmacy pick-up, cafeteria take-out, and other schlepping? Find the lobby, lounge, quiet room, cybercenter, or other spot that your loved one likes, and make that your later regrouping site, while you go get needed goodies.
4. Learn From the Locals. Comraderie is good karma. Prior patients have been there and done that. Ask their caregivers for tricks of the trade, turns that will fool you, and short-cuts that may be safe but not well-marked on official maps.
5. Work the Web. For street transport, Internet-based route-finding free systems are a deity-send for path planning. Yes, www.Mapquest.com got “first mover” market visibility and traffic. But Google.com, Yahoo.com, and other sites also allow you to way-find. Before you drive, type in your destination, your origination, and even optional preferences, and receive back both narrative (texts regarding turns and distances) and visual (map) route instructions.
above: Do you know the fastest route to the nearest appropriate Emergency Room for your cancer patient? (For that matter, for all loved ones, including those who’re currently healthy?)
P.S.: Note to medical and architectural researchers: Please consider and experiment with deploying mock-3D “virtual reality” technology to help hospital visitors. The tools and technology are there; why not harvest some “first mover” p.r. for patient-customer care with free lobby kiosks?!
Go forth toward good cancer care – but be well-directed!
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