Like Nowhere Else – Dan’s Story Video Transcript
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A man in an orange jacket and hat is walking in the snow.
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DAN: Hello. I’m Dan Novy. I now live in Gully, Minnesota. I’ve been a welder most of my life.
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He is sitting 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 enjoy hunting, fishing and spending most of my time in nature. When we moved here a little over a year ago, our plan was to buy the farm. We put up 300 Christmas trees, planted an acre of strawberries and got some chickens running. Had big plans. You know, we had everything set up for our future, we looked good, and then in April we found out I had lung cancer. Plans changed drastically. I was at work and coughed, something came up and it was blood.
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He goes to a hunting hide in the snow.
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I said I have to go in. We need to get this checked out. And we kind of knew in advance it was going to be cancer, because chances are when you cough up blood, there’s something going on in your lungs. And then got checked out. Did the CT scan. They came back with: Yes, it’s cancer. Our options at the time, the doctor said, were probably chemotherapy and radiation. But then we did some more tests and did the PET scan. My doctor down in Fargo said maybe we could do surgery there. So we went to dr. Marks. He looked at it. After several tests, we jointly came to the conclusion that surgery would be possible, but associated with a high risk. They knew they would have to remove the entire right lung. And we did the breath tests and stuff like that and came back. You know, we were at 35% lung capacity. So he assumed I would be on oxygen for the rest of my life. You know, we sat down and talked about it. And we decided to do the surgery and take out the right lung. TINA: Making that decision wasn’t an easy decision. But when I performed the surgery, I knew that if he had his lungs removed, he would have lived longer. I knew that the time of my life would have been shorter if I had done chemotherapy and radiation and I wanted him with me for much longer. DAN: On August 16th we went to Fargo. We had the operation performed. But in this time four hours passed, five hours passed. She became nervous and upset. She went to the nurses station and asked, “Where’s my husband?” And they called back the operating room and said it would take Dan an hour and a half. In total, the operation took 7 hours. She was so upset at the time that she took my daughter back to the hotel and just broke down.
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In one photo, Tina and Dan are smiling.
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They called her back and said Dan was through with the surgery. So she rushed back, and then I think she was pretty excited to see me without oxygen. And since the operation I’ve been walking around. From about to the chickens and back it’s 120 meters. I’ve probably walked a bit further without oxygen. For me there is no oxygen in the house. Since then I’ve been doing really well with only one lung.
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We are approaching the main entrance of an Essentia Health facility. We enter an exam room. Sign, Essentia Health, Fosston.
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Now I’m doing chemotherapy in Fosston, Minnesota, which is only a 20 minute drive away compared to the two and a half hours to Fargo. Essentia in Fosston is a great place too. Great doctors, great nurses. I will do my last three chemotherapy treatments there. What really stood out about my mentorship from Essentia, number one, is Amy. She always spoke to me on the phone. She gave me her phone number. If I had any questions, I could call them. She made sure my needs were met and whatnot, which I really appreciated. and dr Marks did a remarkable job in the operation. I can’t thank him enough.
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Sign, Essentia Health Cancer Center. An MRI machine in a scan room.
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And I’m walking around with one lung and we all thought I was going to get oxygen. And when I spoke to him up there at my first post-op appointment, he was amazed at how well I was doing. Essentia really took great care of me.
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Dan and Tina walk through the snow. Text like nowhere else. The Essentia Health logo appears, consisting of three leaves in a circle.