Anchorage Daily News

A $35 million medical center designed to let Alaskans get their cancers treated without having to leave the state is scheduled to open this weekend.

The plush, three-story Providence Cancer Center seems more hotel than clinic. Walk in and it's easy to be awed by the carpeting, the blond-wood walls, the windows onto a snowy marsh and an obvious absence of a hospital smell. The effect is gentle and upbeat for those passing through its doors.

The center was designed as a comprehensive place that brings together doctors, chemotherapy treatment, therapists and even counselors for the families of cancer patients, said administrators.

On Thursday, the center got a big boost days before its opening when oil giant Conoco Phillips pledged $5 million over the next two years to complete the $20 million in donations Providence sought. The gift is the biggest the company has ever handed out in the state, and one of the largest in its worldwide operations.

In the past several years, Conoco has poured tens of millions of dollars into local charities. In 2007, the company distributed about $12 million. This year, it is expected to give away about $13 million.

"We wanted to look at something to really make a difference," said Conoco Phillips Alaska president Jim Bowles at a hospital press conference.

The statistic that one in three Alaskans is touched by cancer struck a chord with him and other company executives, he said.

Conoco's North Slope competitor BP last year also pledged $2 million over two years for the cancer center.

Cancer is the No. 1 killer in Alaska. Nationally, it is cardiovascular disease.

Located on the Providence campus, the center includes a $4 million radiation machine called a TomoTherapy. The device captures images of a person's cancer and finds its exact location to target for radiation, minimizing the damage to surrounding tissues. Before, cancer patients had to go out of state for such treatment, said Dr. Steve Liu, medical director for the cancer center.

On the main floor of the center, near a row of oncologists' offices, is a room with a vanity mirror, wigs of various lengths and colored scarves, all to help women learn how to deal with baldness from chemotherapy.

"Even though women think they are prepared for it, the day they look in the mirror and clumps of hair fall out, they realize they are not," said cancer center director Wanda Katinszky.

At the Susan Butcher Family Center on the third floor, in a kid-friendly room with miniature chairs, Legos and an aquarium, social workers teach kids how to deal with having a sick parent.

Breast cancer survivor Kim Barrett, 53, sees the centralization of services as the main benefit of the facility: "It was difficult to go from place to place to place. I had to see an oncologist in one place, a radiation oncologist in another place and a surgeon in another."

Correction In a Jan. 11 story on page A-1 about Providence Alaska Medical Center's new cancer center, it said the center was offering a therapy previously never offered in the state. There are two kinds of Tomotherapy. One has been offered in the state. The other is new.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

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