SEQUIM – At 45, Clare Bertucio has seen a lot of suffering.
Yet Bertucio, who finished medical school at the Mayo Clinic in 1993 and went on to work at cancer centers across the country, has also watched the world change.
Now, after four years on the North Olympic Peninsula, she lives in a new era in cancer care – or, more accurately – in the care of the whole person.
When Bertucio co-hosts Saturday’s open house at the Thomas Family Cancer Center – the Olympic Medical Center’s newly expanded cancer center in Sequim – she will show visitors a place wholly unlike the hospitals of the past.
Yes, a cancer diagnosis “is so scary,” said Bertucio, a radiation oncologist and medical director of the center, which comprises 27 doctors, nurses and other staff.
“But we have made tremendous advances,” she said during an interview in a small garden just outside the infusion center.
The prospect of visiting these rooms, where patients receive chemotherapy treatments, is unsettling, Bertucio acknowledges.
But the environment here is as tranquil as such a place could be.
No one’s rushing down long corridors, because there aren’t any.
Rooms are clustered around the garden, steps from the reception area.
No intercom system bleats from the ceiling.
In an emergency, doctors and nurses can be paged, said Ken Rarey, the director of the cancer center.
But otherwise, “from the ground up, this place was designed for comfort. You have to have a calming environment.
“Healing starts not only with radiation and chemotherapy, but with the whole-person concept,” he said.
