Essentia Health transfers patients to new St. Mary’s Medical Center.

Clio Nguyen July 30, 2023 Health & Wellness

Like Nowhere Else – Dan’s Story Video Transcript

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[SOFT MUSIC]

Introduction

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A man in an orange jacket and hat walks in the snow.

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DAN: Hi. I’m Dan Novy. I live in Gully, Minnesota now. I’ve been a welder for the majority of my life.

A Glimpse into Dan’s Life

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He sits in a living room next to a woman.

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This is my wife, Tina. We’ve got four kids total. I’ve got two. She’s got two. I like to hunt, fish, hang out in the outdoors a majority of the time. When we moved up here a little over a year ago, our plan was to buy the farm. We put in 300 Christmas trees, an acre of strawberries, got some chickens going. Had big plans. You know, we had it all set up for our future, looking good, and then found out in April that I had lung cancer. Plans changed drastically. I was at work, and I coughed, and something come up, and it was blood.

The Diagnosis and Treatment Options

(DESCRIPTION)
He heads to a hunting blind in the snow.

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I said, I need to go in. We need to get this checked out. And we kind of knew in advance it was going to be cancer, because chances are, you cough up blood, there’s something going on in the lungs. And then got checked out. Got the CT scan. They came back with, yes, it is cancer. Our options at the time, the doctor said, was probably chemo and radiation. But then we did a few more tests, got the PET scan in. My doctor down there in Fargo said that maybe there, we could do surgery. So we went to Dr. Marks. He looked at it. After multiple testings, we determined together that surgery would be possible, but there’d be a lot of risk to it. They knew that they would have to take the whole entire right lung. And we did the tests for breathing and whatnot, and come back. You know, we had 35% of lung capacity. So he figured I’d be on oxygen the rest of my life. You know, we sat down and talked about it. And we decided to do the surgery and take the right lung. TINA: Making that decision was not an easy choice. But going ahead with the surgery, I knew that he would have had more longevity of life by taking the lung out. If doing chemo and radiation, I knew it would have been more of a shorter time of life, and I wanted him around a lot longer. DAN: August 16, we went up to Fargo. We had the surgery done. But during that time, four hours elapsed, five hours of elapsed. She was getting nervous and upset. She went up to the nurse’s station and she says, where’s my husband? And they called back to the surgery room and said that Dan would be another hour and a half. So that was a 7-hour surgery total. She, at that time, got so upset, she took my daughter back to the hotel and just broke down.

A Remarkable Recovery

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In a photo, Tina and Dan smile.

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They called her back, saying that Dan’s out of surgery. So she rushed back, and then I think she was pretty excited to see me with no oxygen on. And since the surgery, I’ve been walking around. Anywhere from, like, down to the chickens and back is 120 yards. I’ve walked probably a little bit further than that without any oxygen. There’s no oxygen in the house for me. I’ve been doing really good since then with just the one lung.

Continued healthcare at Essentia

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We approach the main entrance of an Essentia Health facility. We enter an exam room. Sign, Essentia Health, Fosston.

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So now I’m doing chemo in Fosston, Minnesota, which is only a 20-minute drive, versus the 2 and 1/2 hours to Fargo. Essentia in Fosston is a great place, also. Great doctors, great nurses. That’s where I’ll take my last three chemo treatments. What really stood out about my care from Essentia, number one, is Amy. She was always on the phone with me. She gave me her phone number. If I had any questions, I could call her. She made sure that my needs were met and whatnot, so I appreciated that. And Dr. Marks was a remarkable with the surgery. I can’t thank him enough.

A New Lease on Life

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Sign, Essentia Health Cancer Center. An MRI machine in a scanning room.

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And I’m up walking around with one lung, and we all thought that I’d be on oxygen. And when I talked to him up there on my first appointment after surgery, he was amazed how well I was doing. So Essentia did a really great care for me.