#IHopeThisHelps, written mostly with newly diagnosed Winship patients in mind
In the ways that some people are policy-wonks, I’m a transportation-wonk (to be fair, I’m probably actually both). When I knew I needed to get to the Winship Emory Cancer Institute in Midtown Atlanta every weekday for seven weeks, I started studying all the routes to get there and park given the time of my appointments (3.15pm), and I invited a group of friends to help me, given that, for the last year, I’ve been living an intentional car-less life (more on that support group in a different post).
Here’s what I have learned:
- The North Avenue MARTA station is only a block away from Winship. You don’t want to be getting on MARTA once you start getting immuno-compromised (which maybe happens quickly into treatment, I don’t know), but I will say that on my first day of treatment, we took MARTA to a stop closer to where our ride could pick us up, because I knew it would take him 30 extra mins just to get to us given the time of day. I always want to boost MARTA. It’s awesome, it’s mostly reliable, and it’s a great way to beat traffic getting into and out of the city.
- The chemo team will tell you that you only get parking vouchers for chemo days, but I learned yesterday that the radiation folks give you parking vouchers as well! So, if that system holds, my drivers won’t be paying to park on any of the treatment days. I’m very pleased about that.
- Winship has a wide entrance loop and a well organized parking deck. You can use valet or self park. There is a wide turn around area in the front of the parking deck where you can easily unload a car or leave it for a couple of minutes if you need to. It is not a terribly rushed space like a lot of hospital parking areas (I’m looking at you Emory Midtown Hospital, one block away : )
- I am a habitually early person, but they caught me. You can’t get past the lobby of the building if you are more than 15 mins early for an appointment on any floor. So, you should show up 15 mins before your appointment to account for a line at registration, getting logged into the system, getting your tracking badge and bracelet, and heading to the elevator. Otherwise, you won’t be on time. If you’re early (like I keep being), you have a nice open, comfortable space to hang out and wait in before you go to registration.
- Veering off course from transportation just a little bit, it’s clear that Winship is a new and patient-focused building. If you pay attention to design, you see this everywhere, from the double chair benches, to the lighting, to the massive amount of windows. It does not feel like a place built for sick people; it feels like a place focused on getting healthy, which is a big difference.
- For chemo treatments, you can only have one person guest join you in your room, technically. Though, outside the chemo room there is a small lobby where an additional person can come for a small amount of time and talk or drop something off. We broke this rule on the first day when Ian sat in the room with us to eat lunch, but this didn’t seem to bother my nurses at all. You just have to be a bit conscious of getting that person into the building and telling them how to find you. If someone isn’t with you when you register, have them go through security, bypass the registration desk, and go straight to the elevators to find you on your floor.
- My chemo treatments happen on 14th floor (which is maybe the area that focuses on head and neck cancers).
- Radiation treatments of all kinds happen on the bottom floor, and you skip the whole registration process for that. Enter security, and then take a hard left and go into the radiation therapy office. There aren’t visitors allowed in the radiation waiting room (it’s just for patients), so your guests will have to wait in the building lobby.
Featured image: the MARTA kiosk on treatment day #1
