This is an opinion column by Niagara Health Communications Specialist Tiffany Mayer, published in the St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review and Welland Tribune.
When Joe Szabo first joined the Walker Family Cancer Centre, he was focused on launching its radiation program.
Thirteen years later, the now-retired radiation physicist finds himself receiving treatment in the very place he helped build.
“There are so many dedicated people in the cancer centre,” Szabo says. “The staff that I used to work with were excellent, just like the staff who are treating me know.”
Szabo is receiving care for Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a rare type of cancer that affects the bone marrow, causing excess antibody production while crowding out healthy blood cells. It tends to grow slowly and can take years to show symptoms.
Doctors began following Szabo’s condition in 2006 when he was working as a medical physicist at Hamilton Health Sciences. After a blood test showed he was anemic, Szabo was diagnosed with a plasma cell disorder that was pre-cancerous, though its future course was unknown.
Working in the field and being part of care teams for patients with incurable blood cancers, Szabo and his wife feared the worst.
“When they told me, (my wife) started crying because she thought I was headed toward a cancer with a poor prognosis,” Szabo says. “To me, I’ve got it relatively easy.”
For years, Szabo continued to live and work unhindered, and in December 2012, he was tapped to help set up the radiation suites – from helping to design maze-like entrances for patient safety and accessibility to programming the machines -- ahead of the Walker Family Cancer Centre’s opening in March 2013 at Marotta Family Hospital in St. Catharines.
“I retired from here knowing this would be a good cancer centre. The care here is great. That’s why I agreed to work here and I stayed to ensure it was good care.”
Care close to home
It was monumental work. Until then, patients with cancer requiring radiation treatment had to travel outside of Niagara for care.
“That was a lot of pressure to be under,” Szabo recalls about the deadline under which he worked.
Given the tight timelines, Szabo set up procedures to treat early-stage breast cancer to start. But there were often reminders in his work of what might be lurking within his own body.
Szabo's definitive diagnosis of Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia came in 2022 after a bone marrow biopsy showed his illness had progressed. He then started to experience symptoms, including nose bleeds, and had tests showing low bone density and high viscosity of his blood. When his hemoglobin levels dropped from low to unacceptable earlier this year, his care team, led by Dr. Robert Clayden, began treatment in June.
Szabo is receiving a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy two days each month for six months. Treatments are administered by a nurse and last about an hour. But he isn’t left to his own devices in between appointments. His care team takes a holistic, patient-centred approach to Szabo’s care by including a nurse, pharmacist, social worker, spiritual support worker and dedicated booking clerk, in addition to Dr. Clayden.
A team effort
“All of these people are important to the success of my treatment,” Szabo says. “And not only are they good nurses (in chemotherapy), they’re also fun.”
Szabo’s care team has also accommodated the 74-year-old’s active lifestyle by forgoing a port or PICC line for his infusions. An avid gardener and producer of the YourTV show, Seniors News and Views, Szabo says those devices, intended to make drug infusions easier, would hinder some of his more physical activities.
If his care plan is successful, it could be years before he would need to return for further treatment, he notes. Current therapies can control his cancer for many years.
“For this cancer, they’re getting rid of all my antibodies… and then they will hopefully come back normal. It’s basically like turning my immune system off and on again,” he explains. “It’s such an easy treatment. I count myself lucky.”
He also considers himself fortunate to receive care at the WFCC.
“I retired from here knowing this would be a good cancer centre,” Szabo says. “The care here is great. That’s why I agreed to work here and I stayed to ensure it was good care.”
The hospital has always been a special place for Szabo.
As a young boy, he would take refuge from his sisters in the attic of his family’s west St. Catharines farmhouse and get lost in the view from his perch.
Huge swaths of farmland unfurled before him, including the parcel that would become home to the hospital and cancer centre he’d help launch – and later provide him care when he needed it most.
“It was neat to come work here at the spot I used to stare at as a kid,” he says. “Every time I drive by on the highway and I look over, I say there’s my (radiation) bunkers. It’s a good feeling.”
