Expert Symptom Management

Pain

Our goal is to provide appropriate pain management to help you live your life as well as possible. We focus on your Quality of Life, so understanding the things that make you you, and the activities and goals that are important to you and how we can help you achieve those goals. This can include medication management as well as coordination of referrals to others for a more holistic treatment of your pain such as physical therapy, acupuncture, chronic behavioral therapy, and interventional pain management.

Dyspnea (Shortness of Breath)

Certain illnesses such as end stage COPD can cause a breathlessness feeling or a ‘smothering’ feeling despite being on appropriate therapies. The idea of Total Dyspnea is that once your medication regimen has been optimized, external factors can also cause shortness of breath. Our goal is to help alleviate those sensations so you can function better.

Anxiety

Living with the fear of having a serious life limiting illness can worsen your overall quality of life. We also know that for certain illnesses such as COPD, increased anxiety can cause worsening shortness of breath which in turn will worsen anxiety. A vicious cycle that can at times be debilitating. Managing anxiety is a great way to help someone not just feel better but overall function better. 

Depression

We help diagnose and treat depression which can naturally occur when diagnosed with a serious illness. Whether it’s related to a new diagnosis or the recurrence of a previously diagnosed cancer that was in remission, our goal is to help you through these difficult times. We help with both medication management as well local counseling services that specialize in supporting patients with serious illnesses.

Nausea & Vomiting

Serious illnesses and especially cancer and cancer treatments can seriously impact your day to day lives. Let us help find the right medication regimen to help while you go through these treatments

Insomnia

​We all need good sleep to let our bodies have a chance to recover and heal. Poor sleep can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and chronic depression. 

Advance Care Planning

​Having a serious illness means we have to also take the time to make sure our loved ones know what’s important to us and how we want to be cared for in the difficult times. We look at Advance Directives to help be those guidelines to be our voice when we may not have one. We can also help with a POLST (Physician Order for Life Sustaining Treatment) for patients in the last year of their lives.

Discussion of Serious Illnesses

​It can be difficult to talk about illnesses that may shorten the time we have remaining. Our goal is to help answer what are sometimes difficult questions related to our own mortality. We also work with local resources including chaplains and spiritual leaders, counselors, and therapists to help you get the support you need during difficult times.