Andrea, Mayo Clinic Patient: It was around December of 2021 that I noticed I was having some shortness of breath. I had a sense something wasn't quite right. The first doctor we engaged with was our family doctor. They couldn't conclude what it was. And it was only when I had a couple of days later a phone call with my rheumatologist that she said to me, I'll never forget her words, "If you were my sister, I would get moving on this very quickly." I had a CT scan done, and that was when I was told there was something in my lung. I was just terrified. How could something be growing in my body. I didn't know about it.
Gerry, Andrea's husband: I was also terrified, but on the other hand, be very diligent and figure out what we could do to be able to hopefully overcome this.
Andrea: We'd always known about the Mayo Clinic just because of its international reputation. The first meeting we had was with Dr. Anderson who took us through the CT scan and talked to us at length and answered our questions about what he was seeing from the test results we sent him.
Bobby Anderson, APRN, C.N.P., D.N.P.: Andrea and I originally met with her CT scan and the suspicion of a potential cancer in her lung. She elected to proceed down the surgical route. And that's where we work directly with our surgical colleagues. Doctor Reisenauer specifically has been a pioneer of this concept to combine an intraoperative biopsy with surgical resection all during the same operative setting.
Janani Reisenauer, M.D., Chair, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Interventional Pulmonologist: Here, because of the multi-disciplinary integrative care that we offer at Mayo Clinic, we were able to review her case together as a team, Bobby and I on the back end before she even came down, make sure that all of her testing and imaging and everything was up to date and everything was facilitated. Patients that come from outside of the United States have a lot of other barriers that they're trying to work through in addition to just understanding our healthcare system. The International Office serves as that patient navigator to help guide them through the different visits and what the purposes of all these different visits are.
Hua Zhou, International Center Patient Coordinator: We provide the patient the services prior to their arrival, and we offer orientations to our patients to address their needs right before they come.
Andrea: It was just so comforting to know that there was a person at the Mayo Clinic who was looking out for our interests and was there to help us.
Gerry: It was the first time in our entire process of dealing with Andrea's crisis that we actually felt heard that someone was ascribing the same value to Andrea that we as a family see her and in that light. It basically confirmed and set a plan of action for Andrea that we knew we were book ended. We had a date. We had a time. We had a plan that we knew we could execute.
Dr. Reisenauer: To be able to offer that consolidated treatment in coordination with Bobby and his team, I think that was really special for her.
Andrea: We met doctor Reisenauer after our two days of testing, and she just inspired a lot of confidence with her knowledge and her approach to describing the results of the testing to me and to Gerry.
Dr. Reisenauer: And once all of that is done and all of that is orchestrated, we could do the biopsy, prove cancer real time, and then flip the patient over and do Andrea's surgery and treat her for the problem all in the same anesthetic and the same setting, where she can then go home in 24 to 48 hours, diagnosed and treated.
Gerry: And sure enough, it's Dr. Reisenauer herself, who came in post-op. And in the most compassionate heartfelt way briefed us on the outcome of the surgery. She said, as far as I'm concerned and the surgical team is concerned, Andrea is cured.
Andrea: It's really hit me on and off over the past year, just how lucky I was and how fortunate I was that we could go to the Mayo and have such extraordinary care.
Bobby Anderson: This place truly does believe that the needs of each individual patient come first. Others are not prioritized over others. We're all here to meet their needs on both the medically indicated timeline and taking into account what is the rest of their life situation.