By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

Editor’s Note: Following is the third in a series on cancer centers in the Diocese of Dodge City.

A certain reality hits you when touring the Heartland Cancer Center in Great Bend: At one moment you are impressed by the large, airy waiting room that winds around the reception areas, the many windows that allow sunlight to permeate within, and the smiling staff who are ready to greet and direct you to the proper area.

Then you arrive at the chemotherapy room. On this day, more than a dozen cancer patients sat in large, stuffed chairs as they received chemotherapy treatments with loved ones standing at their side.

Jamie Hutchinson, RN, director of the center and a major with the Air National Guard, talked jovially with one of the cancer patients. Dozens more will be receiving treatment this day, a workload the Great Bend native and her staff have determined will not distract from their treating each one as a friend.

"At some point today there will be trouble finding a parking spot," she said as she looked out a window over the vast parking lot.

"Everyone has the patients in mind. They are our number one focus. There’s a lot of cancer around here, unfortunately. You never realize how much there is."

Hutchinson, 33, has served as director since the center opened in September 2003; she has been in cancer care for 13 years.

"Early detection is the key," she said. "We need to pay attention to our bodies. In our area we have all these farmers, and they don’t worry about themselves; they care about getting the job done. They come to us and have let things get so far.

"It’s amazing how many wives take care of their husbands, and then finally say, ‘Wow. I guess I’ve had this lump in my breast for about five months.’"

The center, which is owned by Central Kansas Medical Center, boasts top of the line equipment, including the massive linear accelerator, designed to send pin-point laser treatments to the tumor while protecting adjacent healthy tissue.

There’s the CT scanner, which provides 3-D imagery of the patient to doctors, who use the information to prepare the patient and the accelerator for radiation treatment.

There are the doctors themselves, who include three medical oncologists: Drs. Mark Fesen, Greg Nanney, and Fadi Estephan; and one radiation oncologist, Dr. Claudia Perez-Tamayo, who each serve one day per week at the center, bringing their expertise to Great Bend.

And there is the nursing staff, who each day not only serve patients, but who find the emotional strength to serve happily and personally, getting to know the name of each and every one of the 2,000 or so patients the center has served since it opened.

"I have an awesome staff here," Hutchinson said. "The patients’ lives are tough enough; they don’t need to come in here and deal with us being cranky. We take as good care of them as we possibly can, because they have enough to deal with."

Those who are facing a life-threatening disease adopt a different perspective on life, Hutchinson said, a perspective that has taught health care providers like Hutchinson a lot about the value of their own lives.

"The patients are really appreciative and grateful that we’re here," Hutchinson said. "They realize they may only have six months to live, and they have a different outlook on life."

Hutchinson and her husband, Shawn, have two children. For 15 years, she has served as a guardsman with the Air National Guard. She recently returned from a 90-day tour of duty in Iraq -- her first time in a war zone – where, as a nurse, she dealt with everything from bullet wounds to kidney stones.

Leaving Shawn to care for their two kids while running "Satellite Pro’s," a business he started from scratch, wasn’t easy.

"You go over there and focus on what you need to do," Hutchinson explained. "One time I was 30 days from going home. I was on ‘patriot detail,’ moving soldiers’ bodies from the morgue to the plane -- there’s a ceremony we do. That day there were two female bodies. It really hit home. I thought, ‘I guess I really could die. I really could die over here.’ There was gunfire and bombs going off all the time. It’s hard to prepare for it. I don’t even know if I could prepare to go back."

One of the toughest periods Hutchinson faced in her career came not from her military service, but years prior, when she was just starting out as a young nurse working in cancer care. Just as in any facet of life, she said there those who would seek her out, patients with whom she would find a deeper connection.

"That was hard," she said. "I got to the point where I wasn’t crying any more. I remember one night I had to rent every sad movie I had ever seen. It was at four in the morning before I finally started crying again.

"You learn a lot from these patients," she added. "If you come to work and think you’re having a bad day, you look around and realize that your day isn’t so bad."