A New Focus

Lori Boynton is at her happiest at home in her backyard, a spacious spread of land in Lamoine with barns, a paddock, and animals. She finds a shady spot on a sunny summer day to feed afternoon snacks to her donkey, Clementine, and her mule, Mr. Tibbs. She cracks a smile and laughs as Clementine quickly scoffs down a fresh carrot.

“I’m the beast of burden. They don’t do any work at all,” she laughs, “I do all the work and that’s my therapy which has been awesome.”

To look at Lori, with her thick wavy brown hair and healthy complexion, it’s hard to imagine that just months ago she was battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

“It’s such a shocking thing when you hear you have cancer, and I just thought it’s going to be stage one, it’ll be no problem; it was actually stage three! It makes you think much differently about your time here,” she says.

Lori was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in October 2017 and would undergo treatments through May 2018. She had to go to Northern Light Cancer Care for radiation treatments but was able to take oral chemotherapy medication at home. Having already started on chemotherapy treatments at the hospital, Lori knew how it made her feel.

“You’re kind of in the cloud. It’s kind of foggy for lack of a better word. Before, I could multi-task and I could just keep things going in my brain and then it was gone!”

“What Lori was experiencing is not uncommon,” explains Sheila Pascual, MD, who was Lori’s oncologist, “A lot of literature has been written about what they call chemo brain or brain fog and it’s a neural-cognitive dysfunction where there’s a decline or deficit in memory, learning new things, attention.”

Lori might have been worried about trying to keep track of her medications, appointments, bills, and daily chores, except that she was an outpatient in Northern Light Pharmacy’s Oncology Pharmacy Management Program and she had help keeping track of it all. A team of pharmacists, nurses, and financial patient advocates occupy a room on the first floor of the Lafayette Family Cancer Institute. They spend their time on the phone with patients, helping them with everything from finding discount drugs to managing their medications, and coordinating care with their medical team.
 

“Before this program was implemented, patients had no local source to obtain these medications and were forced to go through national mail order specialty pharmacies that were not integrated with the oncology practice so the physicians had a very difficult time coordinating their patient’s care,” explains Matt Marston, manager of the Specialty Pharmacy Program.

Lori reaped the benefits of that level of care. Every week on Fridays, she would receive a phone call from Renee Vachon, RN, staff nurse at the Oral Pharmacy Management program. The two instantly hit it off.

“Lori was the type of person that I connected with immediately. It’s funny when you speak with someone on the phone and you know that you get along. She’s a really special person. I followed her throughout her treatment of oral chemotherapy,” explains Renee.
  “She was very warm and very receptive and no matter what question I had for her, even if to my own ears it sounded stupid, she was just so sweet to me. I felt like I was talking to someone in my family or that I had known all my life because her response to my concerns and my needs was awesome,” Lori says.

In addition to helping them get appointments and manage their medications they also help patients get discounts and financial aid for their medications. Matt says many of their patients pay nothing out of pocket for drugs that can cost up to 20 thousand dollars a month. And they can get their drugs, in many cases, on the same day that they go in for their treatment, unlike through mail order pharmacies which can sometimes take several weeks.

“My hope would be that patients feel supported and feel very comfortable reaching out to us. They are the reason why we’re here and I want them to feel very comfortable,” explained Renee. It’s clear she achieved that goal with Lori. “It just makes me smile to think of her,” Lori said about Renee.

The oral oncology pharmacy management program launched in January 2018 at Northern Light Health Eastern Maine Medical Center. There are plans to expand it to other Northern Light hospitals soon.