LINK IN BIO: In February, I received a call that I spent my whole life hoping would never come - my sister, father and mother were letting me know that my mom had cancer. I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but this was nothing short of earth-shattering, and immediately everything was turned upside down. It was completely natural for my mom that she kicked into overdrive and immediately researched everything she could find about esophageal cancer: the best doctors, diets, timelines, and of course survival rates (which is one of the more unfun group activities your family can engage in together). For several reasons we chose City of Hope Hospital in Duarte. Upon scheduling our first appointment, we quickly received a text message from Mindy at the Patient Services Program at City of Hope introducing herself as our "hospital patient services navigator", and that each patient is paired with one someone from this team. She explained that she would be waiting in the front lobby of the hospital to meet us and take us to all of our appointments, and to send any X-Rays, files, and diagnoses etc. From the moment we embarked on this journey at City of Hope, Mindy quite literally held our hand every step of the way, taking us to and from every appointment, helping us book PET scans and making sure no files were lost along the way. She helped both our doctors and our family stay on course and quickly led us through the many levels of bureaucracy involved in a major hospital, and made us feel that we had an extra member of the family on the inside; a completely invaluable member of the family.