Marion Ellis describes, with painful clarity, the day she lost her hair to cancer.
"For three days, I didn't touch my hair because I knew it was going to fall out. Then one night, I began brushing," she recalls. "I put a towel down on the counter and with each stroke, I laid the hair on the towel until all my hair was off my head and on the towel."
Marion left the hair on counter for two weeks until she finally spoke to it one day and said, "It's time for you to go."
Losing her hair was just one step in this Washago resident's cancer journey. A journey that took her to Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital for chemotherapy, Toronto Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre for assessment, and Royal Victoria Hospital for radiation therapy.
"I am so grateful for the way my treatment journey unfolded,” says this breast cancer survivor.
“My care was carefully coordinated between all the hospitals, and at each facility I received the most compassionate care from doctors and nurses who appeared truly concerned about me."
Marion's experience is not unique. When a patient is diagnosed with cancer in North Simcoe Muskoka, the region's hospitals work together to ensure the patient receives the best care, as close to home as possible. That partnership was formalized recently with the signing of the Regional Cancer Program Hospital Partner Agreements, between Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) and hospitals throughout the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN.
Regional Cancer Programs play a critical role in the planning and delivery of quality cancer services in Ontario. They provide a framework for how we spend our precious cancer dollars, and how we implement provincial cancer programs. Most importantly, they create a coordinated system throughout our hospitals, that assures quality and safety, improves access, and increases education and prevention.
So, whether cancer patients live in Perkinsfield or Port Carling, Coldwater or Collingwood, Bracebridge or Barrie, they will have the same access to lifesaving treatment, the same chance for a healthy life as a patient anywhere else in the province.
In 2012, the Simcoe Muskoka Regional Cancer Centre will open at RVH, as part of the Phase 1 Expansion Project which will double the size of the hospital. In its first year alone, the centre will log over 60,000 patient visits.
But improving cancer services in our region is not dependent on bricks and mortar. It's not about the four walls of a cancer centre. It's about bringing all our health care leaders, and the resources of their organizations, together with Cancer Care Ontario, to make a difference, now.
Royal Victoria Hospital has already launched many cancer initiatives that do just that.
Ours was the first region in the province to bring together groups of specialists from across Simcoe Muskoka through video-conference technology. Now a sole surgeon in a remote part of our region can 'meet' virtually with a larger group of experts to discuss complex cancer cases.
Over the past two years, RVH and its partner hospitals have cut wait times for cancer surgery almost in half, and now it's the shortest wait in the province. In fact, 90 per cent of area cancer patients receive their surgery within 36 days.
In April of this year, RVH opened the doors to the first portable radiation treatment clinic in Canada. This innovative clinic means about 400 patients a year will receive their lifesaving radiation therapy close to home, saving them more than 30,000 trips to and from Toronto.
Why are these hospital agreements and new programs so important? I can give you 2,302 reasons.
That's how many Simcoe Muskoka residents are expected to be diagnosed with cancer this year alone. They are our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, our children and our friends. And they deserve quality care, as close to home as possible.
Suzanne Legue is Royal Victoria Hospital's Senior Director of Corporate Communications
