Why I Care: Why Nurse Anne Marie Mello sees her job and life as a gift

Watch Nurse Anne Marie Mello share her story on becoming an oncology nurse navigator and improving the quality of care that her cancer patients receive.

Transcript

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[CALM MUSIC] What we do is we provide very personal service to our cancer

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patients. There have been studies that have actually shown that patient navigators improve the quality of care

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that cancer patients receive, if they have someone that starts with them at the beginning of their journey.

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My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemo and she went through radiation, and she did her piece. And she was in remission.

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She was supposed to have her port out. That was two years later. And the night that she was supposed to have her port out, she wasn't feeling well.

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And it had metastasized to her liver. I remember so vividly how she used

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to tell me what a difference the right nurse could make, because you were either going to be the nurse that made that day a little less heavy

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or the nurse that made you realize that being sick was the worst thing in the world, because some people just didn't care. And I just thought, at that point,

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this is where I'm going to make my difference. And I was accepted into nursing school

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six months after she died. But for me, it gives my mother's death purpose.

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And it gives me purpose. I'm fueled by remembering what a difference I can make.

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So I think that I just like the fact that I go in to do something I love with people that I enjoy

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working with. And then I get to work with patients who can remind me that life's really a gift.