GREAT FALLS — Benefis Health System's Sletten Cancer Institute has completed its final phase of renovation. While initial phases focused on a teaching kitchen, salon, and a genetic counseling suite, this last effort increased the size of the infusion sight from 20 to 30 chairs, and updated the chairs with massage and heating capabilities.
WATCH:
When you enter the Benefis Sletten Cancer Institute, you’re met with the calm of rushing water, as you head to the Medical Oncology Hematology Infusion waiting room, before you enter the real waiting room.
Sue Cassell, a Benefis patient said, “Sometimes I nap, play games.”
Cassell is battling pancreatic cancer.
Cassell said, “They caught it at stage four, and that’s the worst you can get”
However, she is finding optimism all around her.
Cassell said, “The color for pancreatic cancer is purple. And I love purple, so it’s all good.”
Together with her sister Marlene, Cassell spent the afternoon getting a blood transfusion in the newly renovated transfusion room.
Cassell said, “Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s so comforting. I like the fact that, if you need to close it off, you can. If you want to be by yourself, you can.”
The new room added ten chairs, allowing more space for patients and their loved ones.
Cassell said, “It’s this huge area, but yet they’ve made it more homelike.”
Marlene Lund, Cassell’s sister said, “It’s not your patient and my patient. It’s our patient.”
Lund worked at Benefis for 40 years, and knew this is where her sister would be cared for best.
Lund said, “We didn’t have to go anywhere, because this was available here.”
The patients are not the only ones excited about the renovations.
Paula Olinger, the Clinic Supervisor said, “We had everybody just jammed into a tiny little space, and once they took that wall down and this opened up, it was just like, ‘Wow’”.
Olinger has been with Benefis for 20 years, and she has seen what the new space has done for her patients.
Olinger said, “It just has a more of a caretaking kind of feeling than you’re going to a doctor.
