Waking Up Each Day on the Positive - Message from FCS Staff

FCS CEO Nathan Walcker begins each of his quarterly town hall meetings with what he calls “my favorite thing”— to pause and reflect with his fellow Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) teammates on “our why.”
 

In March 2025, with more than 1,400 team members in attendance during FCS’ town hall, Walcker shared a video featuring the touching story of FCS patient Donna. She credits the care and support received from her team at the FCS Gainesville Cancer Center for enabling her to live her best life during her 13-year journey with late-stage ovarian cancer.
 

This particular testimonial touched the heart of Wendy Shraiar, claims resolution specialist in the FCS revenue cycle management department, who reached out to Walcker to tell him why.

“I, too, am an FCS cancer patient,” Wendy wrote. “I started my chemotherapy treatments 15 years ago this week at Massachusetts General Hospital and moved to Florida due to silly genetics and cancer. I never think about sending emails, except the one I send yearly after my check-in with Dr. Michael McCleod, my FCS oncologist, to thank him for saving me and my sister.”
 
Boston-born and raised, Wendy was working on the Medicaid claims team at Mass General when she felt a hard lump on her breast one Sunday morning in January 2010. She was 38 years old and had given birth to her daughter, Hannah, the previous August.
 
She saw her PCP on Tuesday, had a mammogram and CAT scan on Wednesday and received her diagnosis of BRCA-positive breast cancer that Friday. Wendy started chemotherapy “pretty quickly.”
 
Subsequent genetic testing found that she and her sister and brother had inherited the BRCA gene from their father. Based on those facts, her extensive family history (her parents both lost siblings to various forms of the disease) and the possibility that cancer could recur or spread to her right breast, Wendy underwent a double mastectomy. “At the time my daughter was an infant, and I had no desire to go through this again,” she recalls.
 
Soon after, her sister, a resident of Fort Myers, Florida, was diagnosed with breast cancer and began treatment with Dr. McCleod. Wendy and her mom decided to make a permanent move south to help support the family. Wendy’s job search led her to FCS; she completed an interview online and was offered her position before leaving Boston.
 
Fast forward and 13 years later, Wendy’s cancer is in remission. Once each year, she checks in with Dr. McCleod at the FCS Gladiolus clinic in Fort Myers. She explains: “Do I like going? Absolutely. As long as he tells me that my cancer level is ok and I’m good to go, I’m fine with it! Do I hate going? Yes. Seeing all the patients and knowing all the offices are so busy is a wake-up call.” At the end of each visit, she makes a point to “let the girls know they are doing a fabulous job and that I appreciate them.”
 
Wendy explains that the town hall story got her thinking about “where I have been and where I will be in the next 13 years.”
 
She strives each day to “wake up on the positive.” She stays active by walking three miles a day and often says, “Thank God I’m alive and well enough to say that cancer stinks!”
 
“Hannah, her “best gift from God ever,” is now 15 and Wendy, of course, worries about her genetics. “If Hannah has the gene, I know I have the strength to support her during treatment, and I hope and pray the cure will be found and shared,” she said.
 
Wendy agrees that stories like Donna’s are an important reminder “that everything we do at FCS is all about our patients.” She said, “I always want to do the best I can with each of the claims so that patients get the care they need. I understand what they are going through. When it’s time to fill out my time slip, I say ‘thank you.” Wendy says she agrees with Walcker’s attachment to connecting with “our why”—”even after a stinky day, I can always feel the good.”