We we've had rabbits. We've had different types of animals, but right now we have chickens. We have silky chickens mostly.

It's just a hobby more or less, you know, we just enjoy it. Chickens are a lot like people if you watch them.

In twenty twenty one, we were actually on a Christmas break vacation, like, we'd gotten through the holidays. And I'd noticed when I was putting my bathing suit on and adjusting everything that something felt off.

It was like, surely, it's nothing to worry about. I'm thirty one. It never crossed my mind that it could actually be malignant until it started to grow.

And that's when I went to see my primary care provider.

From there, it was like being shot out of a cannon.

They did my scan and they said, well, she they said, we're gonna go ahead and have our breast radiologist take a look at it. And then the nurse comes back and she says, you know, we'd like to schedule you for a biopsy.

This was Thursday, October seventh. I get the biopsy. And doctor Masters says, you know, it'll probably be a few days before we get the results back. But, you know, as soon as we learn something, we'll let you know.

Come Monday, two weeks shy of turning thirty two, I find out I have invasive ductal carcinoma.

Obviously, when you hear words like malignant or cancer you're immediately forced to face your own mortality.

And the first thought that went through my mind was, how am I gonna take care of my girls?

Thankfully, with Crystal, her disease was found early, and so we were hoping to give her good curative intent treatment and wanting Crystal and her family to be able to have lots and lots of time together in the future.

When you go through cancer, your nurse your nurse navigator is your go to person. I mean, she's like a bridge between sickness to health.

You know, we meet them at diagnosis, we meet them with the surgeon, we meet them with the oncologist.

We're there at their first steps and really important dates for them. So that's that's our goal is to be that one point of contact for them.

I never felt pressure from anyone to go one way or another, even though my left breast was clear. I think I just wanna go ahead and have a double mastectomy. I wanna err on the side of caution.

I took sentinel nodes during my mastectomy. The cancer had moved from the primary tumor into two of those three lymph nodes.

One in eight women get breast cancer, which is horrifically common, but every woman's plan is different, and it comes down to the details of her cancer. And so like with Crystal, we sat down and we said, okay. This is the specifics of how your cancer looked. And based upon that, this is the treatment that we should offer, because ideally, you want all of the treatment you need and none of the treatment you don't need.

I've been an emetophobic for as long as I can remember.

I expressed that to her and, you know, didn't really know how she'd respond to it because it's like, well, it's it's chemo. You know? Of course, you're gonna get sick.

I tell my patients, you shouldn't be throwing up on treatment.

And I think they usually don't believe me when we start talking about it initially. But as we go forward, they'll often come back and say, well, I didn't throw up. I said, what? I I told you I I didn't want that to happen.

People are living through this treatment, during this treatment, and you want them to feel well and live well.

For me, the recommended radiation was six weeks.

After she completed her chemotherapy, then the radiation was administered to the remaining breast tissue and the lymph nodes surrounding this to finish the local regional treatment. If you think of the breast as an external organ with angles coming across the chest so that we're not treating the heart, the lung, and the other tissues which are deep to that, we wanna treat the cancer, we wanna kill the cancer, but we don't wanna damage the surrounding tissue, and this machine allows us to do that.

You grow really close to your care team because you're going there every day.

People say, well, what's the care like at Corbin? I'll say, well, I'll put it this way. I could have drove thirty minutes or I could have drove an hour, and I chose to drive the hour. We have a team here that really cares about educating the patient. We want them to feel comfortable in their decisions that they make.

Patients come in and are greeted by people who care about them. And then you merge that together with the high-tech treatment that we have available. We get the best possible outcomes.

They teach us in med school, they said, your patients won't care what you know unless they know that you care. It's a horrible thing to have to go through, and I want them to know that we're there for them.

You know, I'm living proof that early detection saves lives. I'm living proof that, you know, God works in medicine.

Who I was before cancer, you know, I was Kevin's wife, Eliana and Adeline's mom, you know, child of God, and after cancer, I'm still all of those things.

But now I appreciate it more.

♪ [music]

♪ - [Fran]

It's just me and my dog, Maddie Roo. Maddie Roo is a rescue dog that I got when she was 18 months old. I was lucky to get her with about a week after my previous dog had died. And at that time, my mom and I were living together and my mom wanted another dog.

I like to spend time with my family. I have three nieces, and I have three great-nieces and a great-nephew. You know, I was seeing an oncologist for a year and a half before I got diagnosed with cancer. My white count was low, and so she would watch that.

So, for a year and a half, I'd been going to see her. And I went and had a mammogram, and that's where they found it. And they called me back in and said, "We need to take your mammogram again." And I thought, "That's not good."

"And, oh, we may have to do a sonogram on you. If we see something, we'll do a sonogram," and I just knew that they would see something. And they did. They tell you this big long term of what you have and it goes in one ear and right out the other.

All you hear is cancer. My mother was living at the time, and she had COPD on oxygen. So, I had to stay here for her.

- [Dr. Goodin]

So, being able to have the patients close to home, they're also close to their family, their friends, their communities. Having more support systems, I think, also ultimately helps with their healing and their comfort.

- For me, not having to travel to another place was huge and I know it's not just me. It's other people that live here in town. When you're going through chemo treatment, you're sick. So all I wanted to do was just curl up in a ball and sleep and, you know, let the pain go away.

And it did, you know, but no one wants to be on the road but I was fortunate that I had two really special friends, one of them I work with, one of them I used to work with. My friend Milka took me to every treatment that I had, and my friend Mary who still works with us, she was there every minute by my side. We've got some of the best doctors here in Hardin County. No one should have to go anywhere else, you know?

And that's what everybody wants. Everybody wants a place close by that they can get the best treatment they can and Hardin County has that, you know? So, you know, there's no reason to go anywhere else.

- We have multidisciplinary clinics, and we work on treating people as a team. We bring in the nurse navigator for our breast cancer clinic. We have the dieticians, and social workers, and financial counselors available for them as well, so we help focus on the patient as a whole clinical team as opposed to each specialty working in isolation.

- Since my oncologist retired, it's going to be Dr. Goodin. I have no doubt that I'll continue my journey with him until the time when I don't have to have that journey anymore.

- The goal in Baptist in general and certainly in our cancer center is that we really want to treat people kind of like part of the family. I've actually had a number of family members with cancer that have won and others that have lost the battle and so it became sort of a personal issue for me.

- I can't stress enough the great care that I got. You can't get better doctors. I'm blessed, you know? I don't know what else to say except how fortunate that I am and fortunate that I am to have my treatment done here.

You look at life differently after going through something like this, and you treasure everything, you know? Everything is a little bit sweeter. I treasure my family more, and, you know, grass, the flowers, you know, all of those things. My dog, you know?

I just treasure all those things more because, you know, life is pretty wonderful. ♪ [music]

♪

♪ [music]

♪ - [Kim]

I am a mother of two. I'm married to my awesome husband, Keith, and we've been married for almost 29 years, high school sweethearts. In July of 2017, I was first diagnosed with my cancer and it was Stage 2 ductal carcinoma and it was in my left breast. When you hear that, it's the worst thing you can hear because you have all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

Because you just don't know. I have a great medical team that set forth a great plan. And we did everything that they suggested because we knew it was good for me and us. And I think it worked out great, I'm very lucky.

The plan was to do chemotherapy first to try to reduce the tumor.

- [Dr. Hatmaker]

We use this therapy to help us get a better lumpectomy. It can help us get margins that are more clear. We can remove less tissue, which will enable a better cosmetic result. It also allows us to access the biologic response of the tumor to treatment.

So that when we do remove the tumor, we can see how well our systemic therapy worked.

- During my chemo, the staff at the CBC were great. They were also very accommodating. Six of the treatments were an all-day treatment so we had family come in and out all day. The chemo that I had received worked well enough for me that I was able to preserve my breast.

And once I healed from surgery, I did radiation therapy. Radiation treatments were very tolerable because the treatment itself is very quick. When you're undergoing treatment for any sort of illness, it does affect every part of your being. I think normalcy is very critical in healing because I didn't have to make major charges in anything.

I actually worked every day. It was nice to sleep in my own bed and it was just good to have the comforts of home.

- I think that we all do better when we are in a comfortable environment. I think it has a multitude of effects emotionally, reducing stress on the patient, both financially and emotional to be able to receive care close to home. We have a full complement of the multi-disciplinary team here that I feel are all engaged and enjoy taking care of breast cancer patients. And I think that motivates all of us to stay up to date and know what the latest treatments and technologies are that are most appropriate for each patient and to tailor that treatment accordingly.

You know, patients have a lot of choices for where they want to have their care. Between the coordination of care, the skill and talent of the physician providers, and the multitude of support services that we offer, I just feel like this is the place to be.

- My journey showed me that I can be very strong. I didn't have to be by myself on my journey. I'm so grateful for everyone that I encountered and all the care that I received from Baptist Health. I was able to come home every day after a treatment and stay here to receive world-class care.

♪ [music]

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