ONE FOOT IN FRONT of the other

BY ANDY GREDER >> PHOTO COURESTY OF ESSENTIA HEALTH

Dr. Joni Buechler learned an important lesson from her own life just as she was wrapping up years of training to become a cancer specialist.

The radiation oncologist says she gained a deeper understanding of what her patients experience when her own routine mammogram came back abnormal. “I was worried. I cried. I couldn’t sleep,” she recalls. A later test determined there was no cancer.

“My patients amaze me,” says Dr. Buechler, who joined the Essentia Health Cancer Center in Fargo last spring. “They have a cancer diagnosis and every day they get up and put one foot in front of the other. Some of them continue to work, take care of their families and take care of themselves. I’m just in awe of them.”

Dr. Buechler, 47, grew up on a farm northwest of Bismarck, near Golden Valley. She and her three sisters worked alongside her brother and parents in the grain fields and cattle barns.

“They taught me how to work, how to be honest, how to be kind,” she says of her parents. “My dad always said a girl can drive a tractor just as good as a boy can. He instilled in me that I can do anything that a boy can do.”

Dr. Buechler enrolled at Minot State University and stumbled upon radiation technology as she searched the course catalog. “I had no idea what that was about,” she recalls. “I probably had one X-ray taken in my life. I just thought that it looked kind of interesting.”

Dr. Buechler worked first as an X-ray technician, then as a radiation therapist and later a nurse. Most of her education and work has been in North Dakota.

“I loved being a nurse, but felt that God wanted me to apply to medical school,” says Dr. Buechler. “I did not want to do it. I knew that it would take a lot of time and a lot of money and I didn’t know if I was smart enough to do it.”

Dr. Buechler graduated from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Grand Forks and served her residency in radiation oncology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, Iowa.

The physician believes her background helps her make patients feel more comfortable. For example, she often asks herself whether a patient will be able to get on to an exam table or hold a position during treatment.

“I still consider the other aspects of the patient and not just what I’m treating,” says the board-certified radiation oncologist. “I see them in a different way.”

Dr. Buechler works with each patient and his or her care team to develop an individualized treatment plan. She determines how to use regulated doses of radiation to kill cancer cells.

Dr. Buechler says she and the other healthcare professionals at Essentia Health don’t see patients as just the type of cancer listed in their charts. “We think of them by their first name or their laugh,” she says.

When Dr. Buechler meets patients, she wants to get to know them – where they live, what they do for a living, if they have pets. Then she gets into the diagnosis.

“Sometimes they come to me and they might not know the cancer is aggressive, so somebody needs to tell them,” Dr. Buechler says. “I don’t go all doom and gloom, but I also don’t sugar-coat things. I pretty much put the cards on the table and I think they appreciate that.”

Dr. Buechler says her strong faith helps sustain her in her work. “I will pray with some of my patients,” she says, “but I pray for all of my patients.” [AWM]