Blog

When Darth Vadar walked through the doors at Lompoc Health - Hematology-Oncology, the staff knew it wasn’t going to be a typical appointment for the man behind the mask.

National Cancer Survivors Day is commemorated today as a celebration for those who have survived through a cancer diagnosis and as a way to outreach to the community about key cancer issues. 

Vilinda Shaner Read wanted to do something to cheer up her brother Bill, who is being cared for at the Comprehensive Care Center and unable to have visitors due to the COVID-19 virus and visitor restrictions.

At the age of six, the path of Jim Morgenstern’s life changed forever. It was at that tender age in 1949 that the Fresno boy was diagnosed with polio. 

Mary Silva Cabral has always been a caretaker. A lifelong hard worker, she was born 101 years ago in an old adobe home on Mail Road. 

For many of her 59 years, Lompoc resident Grace Handlen has had her health care managed by one medical organization. Born at Cottage Hospital, her family physician, throughout the years, practiced with Santa Barbara Medical Foundation, which eventually became Sansum Clinic.

The couple were so impressed with their entire experience – from pre-natal care to postpartum breastfeeding assistance — that they now joke with one another that they want to have more children just so they can deliver at LVMC. “There were people here to help us the whole way through,” Stacie says. “We didn’t feel like we were having to figure out everything on our own.”

The small lump on my right elbow turned out to be a liposarcoma of the right triceps, and it needed to be gone.

Apprehension, dread, nervousness, fear, caution, uncomfortable, and worry. These are all too common feelings and emotions among patients entering into their local public hospital. With each entry, there is a long shadowed storyline unknown to the passerby or the receptionist at the desk, logging one of many patients for the day. For some, the entire experience can feel unnatural, clinical, and downright impersonal and, at times, even cold. Such a scenario did not greet me on a cool Wednesday morning at the Lompoc Hospital.

Before the end of April, longtime Lompoc resident Bob Taylor knew about the Comprehensive Care Center, but had never been inside.

Seeing my father struggle with weight has been a part of my life from my very first memory. Every day, I could see the difficulty he had moving and breathing. The shame and guilt that he had from eating just like a “normal person” because of his size were evident everywhere we went. I saw it even when I was a small child – people would stare at him all the time because of his size.

When Elizabeth McKenzie arrived as a patient at the Comprehensive Care Center, she says she could “wiggle one foot, wiggle one hand, and flap my lips.”

When plastic surgeon Dr. John Baeke first saw 7-year old Marsahn Elijah Emerson in the Lompoc Valley Medical Center Emergency Department last December, the little boy’s head was a mass of bloody lacerations and punctures.

Dick Newcomb and his younger brother Glen were always close as siblings, even with four years separating them.

Lompoc resident Naomi Hopkins has been a patient of Dr. Rod Huss’ for a year, and last October, he delivered her daughter, Phoenix Skye White.