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Like Nowhere Else – Dan’s Story Video Transcript
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[SOFT MUSIC]
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A man in an orange jacket and hat walks through the snow.
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DA: Hi. I am Dan Novy. I live in Gully, Minnesota now. I have been a welder for most of my life.
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He is seated in a living room next to a woman.
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This is my wife, Tina. We have four children in total. I have two. She has two. I like hunting, fishing, going outside most of the time. When we moved here just over a year ago, our plan was to buy the farm. We planted 300 Christmas trees, an acre of strawberries, started a few chickens. Had big plans. You know, we had prepared everything for our future, in style, and then we found out in April that I had lung cancer. Plans have changed dramatically. I was at work, and I coughed, and something came up, and it was blood.
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He heads for a hunting cache in the snow.
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I said, I have to come in. We have to check that. And we knew in advance that it would be cancer, because there’s a good chance that if you’re coughing up blood, there’s something going on in your lungs. And then I was checked. I have the scanner. They came back with, yes, it’s cancer. Our options at the time, the doctor said, were probably chemo and radiation. But then we did some more tests, we ran the PET scan. My doctor over in Fargo said maybe over there we could do some surgery. So we went to see Dr. Marks. He looked at him. After several tests, we determined together that the surgery would be possible, but that it would involve many risks. They knew they would have to harvest the entire right lung. And we did the breathing tests and so forth, and came back. You know, we had 35% lung capacity. So he figured I’d be on oxygen for the rest of my life. You know, we sat down and talked about it. And we decided to do the operation and take the right lung. TINA: Making this decision was not an easy choice. But going forward with the operation, I knew he would have had more longevity by removing the lung. If I was doing chemo and radiation I knew the lifespan would have been shorter and I wanted it much longer. DAN: On August 16, we went up to Fargo. We had surgery. But during that time, four hours have passed, five hours have passed. She was getting nervous and upset. She came up to the nurses’ station and she said, where’s my husband? And they called back to the OR and said Dan would be another hour and a half. So it was a total of 7 hours of surgery. At that point she got so upset that she took my daughter back to the hotel and collapsed.
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In one photo, Tina and Dan are smiling.
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They called her back, saying Dan was out of surgery. So she rushed over, and then I think she was pretty excited to see me without oxygen. And since the operation, I walk around. Anywhere, like, up to the chickens and back is 120 yards. I probably walked a little further than that without oxygen. There is no oxygen in the house for me. I’ve been fine ever since with one lung.
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We are approaching the main entrance of an Essentia Health facility. We enter an examination room. Sign, Essentia Health, Fosston.
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So now I’m doing chemo in Fosston, Minnesota which is only a 20 minute drive away compared to Fargo’s 2 1/2 hours. Essentia in Fosston is also a great place. Great doctors, great nurses. This is where I will do my last three chemo treatments. What really stood out to me about my Essentia care, number one, was Amy. She was always on the phone with me. She gave me her phone number. If I had any questions, I could call him. She made sure my needs were met and so on so I appreciated that. And Dr. Marks was outstanding with the surgery. I can’t thank him enough.
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Sign, Essentia Health Cancer Center. An MRI machine in a scanning room.
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And I walk around with only one lung, and we all thought I’d be on oxygen. And when I spoke to him up there on my first post-op appointment, he was amazed at how well I was doing. So Essentia did a very good treatment for me.
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Dan and Tina are walking in the snow. Text, like nowhere else. The Essentia Health logo appears, consisting of three leaves in a circle.
