LVHN’s Patient Blood Management Program Helps Tori Conquer His Fears to Battle Cancer

After nearly 24 years of marriage and four kids, Bonnie and Tori Moore had their routines. One featured Bonnie urging Tori to see a doctor over some malady. Forget needles, Tori wouldn’t even take an aspirin; he’d outlast the discomfort. His signature move was a heating pad for back pain so acute it would drive most mortals to tears.

Bonnie, however, had her own go-to move: “Tori, I’m paying all this money for insurance. If you’re not going to use it, I’m going to drop you.”

That wasn’t going to work after Tori received a colonoscopy in May 2024 after results from an at-home screening kit came back positive. Colon and rectal surgeon William Sangster, MD, eventually diagnosed Tori with stage 3 colon cancer, which had spread to his lymph nodes. Surgery was required.

Bonnie urged Tori to use Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN)’s Patient Blood Management Program, which she had done in 2020 when she had a partial hysterectomy and wanted a bloodless surgery for religious beliefs.

“It took a weight off my shoulders,” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe how helpful they were. I just arrived at the hospital and they had everything laid out for me.”  

Tori Moore would be in good hands. He just had to realize it.

The Patient Blood Management Program, which began in 2019, collaborates with surgical teams at LVHN to coordinate a detailed plan for patients who want a procedure without using transfused blood. Their reasons why range from health concerns to personal beliefs, but what’s important to Kelly Frinzi, Lead Patient Liaison for the LVHN Patient Blood Management and Bloodless Surgery team, is that nobody feels alone.

That was especially the case for Tori.  

“I didn’t know anything about surgery and being sick,” says Tori, 50, who lives in Phillipsburg, N.J., and works in the maintenance department at an area hospital. Frinzi was at Tori’s side from the initial Zoom consultation to his bedside on surgery day. He never felt like an item on a checklist.

“They kept me at ease,” he says now. “I’d recommend them to anyone.”

Frinzi, who also worked with Bonnie, said she helped Tori “understand what to expect, what is normal, what is something he might want to talk to the doctor about.”

The Patient Blood Management Program is used to delivering such attention. Since the program can match each patient with a skilled and compassionate bloodless surgery champion at LVHN, area residents don’t have to trek to Philadelphia or North Jersey. In 2019, Frinzi says, the program had about 7,500 patient encounters; in 2023, it surged to more than 27,000.

Dr. Sangster likes to perform bloodless surgeries whenever possible. “There’s been research and studies that giving blood transfusions during an operation” can actually lead to complications post-operation, including “increased morbidity [and] sometimes increasing mortalities,” he says. Tori’s surgery in June 2024 at Lehigh Valley Hospital–Cedar Crest in Allentown was done robotically in about three hours. Though the cancerous sigmoid colon – the S-shaped part of the large intestine closest to the rectum ­– was removed, the surgeon says the procedure was minimally invasive.

Tori’s chemotherapy treatments are going well. He is expected to finish by the end of January.

Bonnie Moore credits the Patient Blood Management Team and Dr. Sangster with getting Tori through the surgery, which gave her husband the confidence to undergo chemotherapy and finish what he started.

For the Moores, LVHN is a family affair. Based on her experiences with the Patient Blood Management Program, Bonnie moved her mother, who has had health problems, to be closer to LVHN’s network of facilities.

Such treatment is another day at the office for Frinzi.

“You need to be honest and reassuring,” Frinzi says. “The patient needs to have trust in you and also feel your compassion and your care. They need to feel that.”