Crackdown on cancer
Gallup’s new cancer center seeing more and more patients

Since the opening of the New Mexico Cancer Center offices in January, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long, MD., and clinic supervisor Ann Bruhn have seen their patient load increase, and have recently added IHS to their client list. The clinic will be adding medical oncologist Robert Oldham MD to its staff next month to help meet the variety of needs of their patients. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

First in a two-part series

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — When Indian Health Service officials came visiting to Gallup’s new cancer center recently, they didn’t want to see the center’s state-of-the-art equipment, one piece of which cost more than a million dollars.

Instead, they made a beeline to what was probably the center’s least state-of-the-art piece of equipment — the center’s traditional hogan.

But that was all right with officials for the New Mexico Cancer Center, which opened in January near the University of New Mexico-Gallup campus. They knew that cancer treatment comes in all shapes and sizes.

After all, the average person has better than a 1 in 4 chance of being diagnosed some time during their life with some form of cancer and the fact that there is now a cancer treatment center right in there in Gallup could, in some ways, be considered a godsend.

Which is why, said the center’s radiation oncologist, Dr. Jeffrey Long , people have a tendency to read stories about cancer when they appear in their local paper.

At its grand opening, officials for the New Mexico Oncology and Hematology Associates, which owns the center, said it would probably be a couple of years before the facility stated making a profit, and that prediction still seems to be valid.

But business at the center has been picking up in recent weeks after the organization worked out an agreement with the Indian Health Service to treat Native Americans in this area. As a result, the center will be increasing its physician staff from one to two on Oct. 1 with Robert Oldham, a medical oncologist, joining Long.

At last count, the center has 15 patients being treated for radiation therapy and another 25 receiving chemotherapy on a regular basis. The center also sees many patients who need follow-up work from treatments they are receiving at other facilities.

The center still has that “new car” look and smell, and there’s no time that one can actually say it’s crowded but Ann Bruhn, the clinical director, said the center’s client base is growing and as the center begins treatment of Native Americans through the IHS contract, it’s going to start becoming busier.

“Right now we are getting patients from all over this area, including Grants,” Bruin said.

The number of patients going to the center currently, however, is only a fraction of those in the area who are undergoing treatment at the present time for various types of cancers. Part of this is because of the fact, said Long, that it’s important for people who have begun radiation treatment to continue going to the place where they started treatment.

It’s not as important for those receiving chemotherapy, so with the patient’s and original doctor’s approval, chemotherapy treatment is being transferred from centers in Farmington, Albuquerque and elsewhere as people realize that having the treatment in Gallup saves them time and the expense of traveling two or more hours several times a week to be treated.

While much of the work being done at the center is for physical healing, there is also treatment being done for the spiritual side of the illness as well.

Volunteers for the American Cancer Society, many of them cancer survivors, are at the center twice a week — Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, talking to cancer patients and answering any questions they may have about surviving with the disease. Every Wednesday support groups hold meetings and on the first Tuesday of every month, the center has “look good, feel better” sessions that deal with even another aspect of surviving the disease.

And even though the center has reached nowhere near its capacity to treat patients, Long said the organization is prepared, when the time comes, to expand its operation and provide even more services to cancer victims in the Gallup area.

“We’re ready to grow,” he said, adding that when the center was designed, it was done in such a way that expansion could be easily implemented.

TOMORROW: A place for patients and their families to stay.