Adventist Health Bakersfield | You + Us | Winter 2020

6 Living God’s love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope. YOU + US : Together i nsp i red ® Inspiring Hope It started as a joke, just in passing, but when a patient reveals a wish to his team of radiation therapists at the Adventist Health AIS Cancer Center, they listen. The radiation treatment room at the center, which opened in 2013 across the street from Adventist Health Bakersfield, features a linear accelerator machine that pinpoints cancerous tumors within 1 millimeter of accuracy. The machine also includes an assortment of LED lights and satellite music as a way to comfort and relax patients. That led patient Jeff Caneta to comment about some fun possibilities. “I thought it was neat how they can change the color and that they also have the capability of playing music during the monotonous, mundane radiation treatments. So I noted that wouldn’t it be cool if the LED lights were purple and Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ began to play while someone was getting treatment?” recalls Caneta, 53, a business teacher at Frontier High School undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. “Wouldn’t that be something?” By the time Caneta returned to the Adventist Health Bakersfield AIS Cancer Center for his next round of radiation, radiation therapists Karley Bonds and Amy Helms had a plan. Making it rain When patients first start radiation therapy, they are usually very anxious—and understandably so, Bonds says. “Medical treatments can be very scary and intimidating. They are about to commit to several weeks of daily treatments, and that impacts their life significantly,” she explains. “We do our best to educate them as much as possible and give them a tour of the Radiation Oncology department before their actual treatment begins to help calm some of the anxiety that comes with the unknown.” But there can still be nerves, so the staff tries to find other ways to make patients’ time and experience a little more comfortable. Finding the silver lining in ‘Purple Rain’ The AIS Cancer Center 2620 Chester Ave. Bakersfield •   Kern County’s first TrueBeam linear accelerator •  The only comprehensive cancer care center in Kern County with a Commission on Cancer accreditation 661-323-4673 ahbakersfield.org/ cancercare Made for more music