Experience as breast cancer survivor provides unique prospective for clinical navigator at Blessing

QUINCY — “Hi. This is Jessica. How can I help you?”

Many businesses train their people to answer their phones this way. It’s a standard method of greeting someone in the service industry. People hear it a dozen times a day.

When Blessing Hospital’s Jessica Nuebel answers the phone with that phrase, she truly means it.

Nuebel is a nationally accredited clinical navigator at the Blessing Hospital Breast Center.  She fills many roles for a patient recently diagnosed with breast cancer, such as confidant, note taker, hand holder and guide.

It’s obviously an overwhelming experience for the patient.

“These patients are shuffled amongst different specialties, and I work with all those specialties, so I am the bridge between all of them,” Nuebel said. “When a patient sees providers in three different offices and they have a question, they may not know who to ask or who is the right provider to help her deal with a specific complaint or concern. I am the consistent piece in the whole treatment team.”

Nuebel’s experience as a breast cancer survivor provides a unique perspective.

“Oh, I think it’s huge,” she said. “I must be very delicate about when I choose to share that, because I don’t want patients making decisions based off the decisions I made. Every case is different. There are special considerations for each person, and when people find out that I’m a survivor, they’re immediately like, ‘Oh, OK, you’ve done this, great.’ But then also, “OK, what decision did you make?’”

Nuebel spent 18 years as a registered nurse in obstetrics at Blessing Hospital.  Part of her duties were caring for post-operative mastectomy patients. Then Nuebel received her diagnosis, and she became one of those patients. She quickly found out it required a different type of care.

“It wasn’t labor and delivery … what we were used to taking care of,” she said. “(We) didn’t know how to take care for these types of patients.”

The experience helped her be a better obstetrics nurse for that category of post-op patients. Based on her experience, she could provide an understanding that others could not.

“I just found this niche where I could provide care for these women,” she said. “I could go and sit with them and start talking, and I realized they just needed someone to talk to and how important of a role that was. 

“Then the role (of clinical navigator) became open, and it just fell in my lap. I didn’t seek it. It sought me. “

Nuebel is one of more than 4 million breast cancer survivors in the United States. Thirty percent of all cancer diagnoses among women will be breast cancer, and 45,000 women die annually of breast cancer. 

The patient isn’t the only going through this ordeal. Family and friends do as well.

“No one is born with the know-how of how to navigate a diagnosis like this and all the mental distress that goes along with it for the patient and the significant others,” Nuebel said. “Things move quickly. You get diagnosed and then, boom, you’re meeting all these doctors and have to make all these treatment decisions. It’s a lot to digest and make sense out of.

“The family/friend support person feels a great sense of responsibility to help the patient, and it’s a lot for them. Not only am I there for the patient but also the patient’s support person.”

After her own experience with breast cancer, Nuebel found a door was opened. She walked on through, using her past struggles to ease others struggles.

“You know, your own personal experiences just lead you down different paths,” she said. “I am absolutely doing … this is what I’m supposed to be doing at this point in my life. Absolutely. Hands down.”