500,000 people are newly diagnosed with cancer in Germany every year. There are 7,500 people in Munich alone. And the number of diseases, doctors agree, will continue to increase in the coming years. The motto of World Cancer Day on February 4th is “Closing gaps in care”. The patient house, which opened in Munich in April 2022, is already closing a gap – in that the team gives patients time and offers individual help.
Angelika Amann simply brought it with her. A glittering silver magic wand with a star on the tip. She got it from a patient. Thanks for the great help. The 44-year-old from the cancer counseling center of the tumor center at the Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC) of the LMU-Klinikum works in the patient house, which focuses on two words: time and help. When the diagnosis overwhelms you and you no longer know what to do next. When insecurity and fear paralyze you, forms and applications overwhelm you, or a lack of appetite during chemotherapy heralds social withdrawal.
“I always say: Tell us, and then we’ll see what we can do,” says Amann. But in the eyes of one of her patients, that’s a lot. “There’s nothing they can’t help with at the patient’s home,” she says, and immediately begins to relate. Without saying her name. Very open, very calm. Her voice sounds powerful, even though she just caught a cold. Not good at all. Because she actually needs her last chemotherapy cycle. “Unfortunately that’s not possible right now.”
13 advisors are available in the patient house with advice and action
The 46-year-old is suffering from “multiple myeloma”, bone marrow cancer. At the end of March 2022 she received the diagnosis, and only a little later the first chemotherapy. She tolerates it very well. Then she will be prepared for a stem cell transplant. Things are going better there than she thought. The second chemotherapy, however, costs her strength, she feels “poor”. And she’s looking for help. Her oncologist hands her a flyer from the CCC and the patient house.
Supportive services are offered under one roof in Bavaria’s only therapy-accompanying contact point for cancer patients, but also for relatives. The LMU-Klinikum as well as the Klinikum Rechts der Isar of the Technical University (TU) works at Pettenkoferstraße 8a together with the tumor center of the CCC, the cancer society and the Lebensmut association. 13 counselors are looking for individual ways to help people with the diagnosis of cancer, which changes life so fundamentally.
Happy about the cooperation between the university clinics of the LMU and the TU: the two directors of the patient house, Volker Heinemann (left) and Hana Algül (right) and the coordinator of the patient house, Julia Demmelhuber.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
From diagnosis to palliative care – “we accompany every phase of the disease,” says Amann. Whether it’s about the patient needing help applying for a disabled person’s pass or a wig because she lost her hair as a result of chemotherapy. Or about the right nutrition tips. “In most cases, we can counteract the loss of appetite with individual eating tips, for example,” says nutritionist Sarah Löhnchen.
And it’s about what triggers cancer: in families, in single parents, in children. Like a magnifying glass, the disease often reveals the background, says Amann: families that are no longer intact, precarious circumstances, money worries. Many people, especially older people, live alone. The question of how to take care of yourself is often raised. The question of how to prepare for death, says Anita Regenberg from the cancer counseling center of the Bavarian Cancer Society. Do I need a living will? How do I arrange everything?
Good cell and bad cell: In the family room there are lots of stuffed animals and encouragement for the little patients.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
And there is the question of a mother, a father: how do I tell the children that I have cancer? Pia Kandlinger, 27, from the Lebensmut association, talks about the many family consultations in the patient home. “Kids are very direct,” she says, and they asked a lot of questions. But it is very important to name the disease. Also to say cancer and not to talk around it. In the patient house there is also a cancer-free zone for the children, a “free space”, as a meeting place for young people is called. Here we talk, here we are silent and sometimes weep together.
The fingers of the 46-year-old patient often go numb. Again she turns to the patient’s house. She wants to do some sport, needs exercise. And again Angelika Amann, whom she affectionately calls “my little God”, helps her. Everyone in the patient house is a “profit maker” and everyone is, she says and laughs, “so nice and normal here”.
Low-threshold and free offers
It is important to the director of the CCC, Volker Heinemann, that everything in the patient house is “low-threshold and, above all, free of charge”. And that the offers are really tailored to the needs of the people. “That’s why we have the Patient Advisory Board of the CCC,” says Heinemann. The committee made up of those affected and their relatives play a very important role. “It’s all about,” says Corina Weixler from the patient advisory board, about the “complex view” of what the sick really need. That’s why they want to work even more closely with the patients and involve them even more in medical processes, says Hana Algül from the Klinikum Rechts der Isar. What that means in the future: offering further training or a patient day as well as patient question hours.
Angelika Amann keeps talking about “cancer-free islands”, which are so important so that you can give everyday life a structure despite the illness. “Integrating everything new into life,” she says, is “so important.” And she emphasizes the word life. This also applies to the 46-year-old patient, who has found islands for herself with the help of the patient home. Because her cancer is not curable. He will always come back, she says. But there is no option to give up. Not just because of her daughter. She is only six years old.