Catching up with the delightful and insightful Judy Ferraz…
by Stephanie Lile
Nurse Judy meets the Emperor of All Maladies, the book form of what she helps patients deal with every day.
Judy Ferraz, an RN care manager for the oncology floor at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tacoma, WA, has served in a range of capacities over the course of her career. From hospital shift work, to office nursing, to charge nurse, and now care manager, she has assisted many cancer patients in their journey from initial treatment to cure or end of life.
“The thing I like most about my job,” says Ferraz, “is that I get to have a continued relationship with patients and families through the course of their treatment. This is unique to oncology.”
With initial chemotherapy being her usual start point with a patient, Ferraz finds that one of her key roles is in cancer education. People enter the world of cancer treatment—particularly that which must take place in a hospital, such as chemo for acute forms of lymphoma and leukemia—in a whirlwind post diagnosis.
Words, says Ferraz, are sometimes the biggest stumbling blocks. “All these words get thrown out that don’t have a lot of details attached to them,” she says. And it’s true, every work specialty has its lingo, and oncology (meaning here the study and treatment of cancer) is far from immune. “We often assume that patients and caregivers have a broader knowledge,” Ferraz explains. “But we forget that words like ‘cure,’ ‘remission,’ ‘chronic,’ ‘recurrence,’ ‘metastasis,’ ‘tumors’ (both liquid and solid), and ‘mass or growth’ have particular definitions in relation to the treatment and evaluation of each patient.”
In addition to the blur of vocabulary, it’s the lifestyle changes that are often most difficult for patients and their families to adapt to. “People have to be given permission to be in control and have a sense of normalcy in their lives during treatment,” says Ferraz. “ You really can have an impact on your status by adopting a certain attitude—are you sick or not sick?” Those who adopt the “not sick, just in treatment” attitude often get through chemo much easier.
In the big picture of cancer treatment, and Ferraz has seen decades of it, the toughest questions that inevitably come up for every patient are “Why me?” and “How did I get it?” That’s the tough part. Although we’ve made amazing advances in treatment, we still haven’t truly nailed down why some people get cancer and others don’t. “G-shots have revolutionized cancer treatment,” says Ferraz (which here means shots of Neupogen or Neulasta given to many patients in chemotherapy to boost white blood cell production). “But the worst part of my job is that after all this time, it’s still so rare to be able to go, Ah ha! That’s it, that’s the thing that caused it.”
Despite these lingering questions, there have been great strides made in identifying genes that are linked to certain types of cancer. “If a woman has had combinations of breast, ovarian, and colorectal cancer, she should really get checked for the BRCA 1 & 2 genes. It can have serious ramifications, not just for her daughters but for sons as well since they could carry it and pass it to their daughters.”
While cancer is a scary topic for most of us, it’s truly people like Ferraz who help make the experience of treatment tolerable. After all she has seen and experienced, she still helps foster hope and champion dignity for all the patients she comes in contact with. Her dedication to cancer education and helping patients and families deal with the challenges and tough decisions they face is obvious. “Under the surface—no matter what our culture or social status—we are all the same,” says Ferraz. “Scratch the surface and we’re all scared inside and we’re all mostly good. Cancer has no clear delineator as to who it affects. So we should all live our best life all the time.”
…………….
Steph’s Note: Andrei and I met Judy during Andrei’s first hospital stay at the start of his 6-month Hyper-CVAD treatment. She was a wealth of information to Andrei then, and continues to be an amazing source of support to me since his relapse and death.
