I come from a very musical background. My, spouse does too. So we we sing a lot in church and play instruments. And, my son is Braden. He loves music too. So I just I really just love being with my family.

I work for Baptist. I started there in 2002. My screening mammogram was January sixth of last year. You know, I didn't think anything of it.

I'd had two prior screenings. My chart popped up in my email, and so I read it, and it said that I needed to come back for additional views. Because of the the way it looked that it wasn't, it was not clear borders around. He wanna do a biopsy.

I found out Wednesday afternoon, there was a couple other girls still working with me at the front, and so I I remember turning around. She said, I know, girls, it's cancer.

You don't think these things are gonna happen to you, but then, you know, the more you think about it, how many people have come through that have had cancer or have family members that have cancer. And then you start to just say, you know, I'm I'm one of the ones.

Jamie came to me with an abnormal mammogram and we continued to work that up with a biopsy and a diagnosis.

And then based on her specific breast cancer, she got chemotherapy first. One of the big things we look at is what's called the receptor status of a breast cancer, and that includes an estrogen receptor, a progesterone receptor, and something called HER2. And she actually had a triple-negative breast cancer, so all three of her receptors were negative. So triple-negative breast cancers tend to be more aggressive, so we give chemotherapy before surgery.

I was very excited that I was able to get in to see her, and I saw, my oncologist, Doctor Chua. He just knew exactly he knew what we needed to do.

Breast cancer doesn't just affect one part of a patient's life. It is life-altering in every aspect. So you have to remember that. You can't just focus on, oh, here's what the patient's problem is, here's what surgery they need, let's do it and get it done. You have to think about how it's affecting every other aspect of their life and remember that that has implications for what you're doing for that patient.

There were some really, really, really hard days and where you think I can't, can't do it anymore.

But then you do, you think about your child and that you wanna see them graduate, you wanna see them get married. Family, church family, my coworkers were just such a part of me being able to push through. I was given the choice to do, you know, at the end, once the chemo got all the cancer, to do the mastectomy, and that was I still wanted to stay with that choice. I went to see Doctor Verbest about, about reconstruction.

What Jamie, I believe, needed most was not necessarily a discussion of how we're doing reconstruction, but just reassurance that it was gonna be okay. You know, that this very overwhelming, very daunting diagnosis and this process that she was entering into that was gonna seem like a whirlwind was ultimately going to be okay. There are so many different ways to get from point a being cancer diagnosis to point b being fully reconstructed so many ways. What we ultimately decided to do with Jamie was a two-stage approach to reconstruction wherein we we begin the process with placement of tissue expanders.

We we redevelop, the the tissue conditions necessary to facilitate reconstruction. And then at a future date, we return and we remove those devices and place a permanent implant.

Batches Health Paducah is a full-spectrum breast cancer care center, so we have everything a woman needs on her journey from diagnosis to surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and reconstruction. And we're in the only hospital in the area that has all of that.

It makes you more compassionate.

It definitely made my job more meaningful.

Just get those screenings because it's just it could I mean, it could save your life.

In August of 2022, I was having really severe liver pains, like, kind of lightning bolt that was just wasn't right. You know, something was really, really wrong.

And it's really scary to have to go into the unknown knowing that something is wrong.

Baptist was the closest place to my house. They said that I needed to get a CT scan. My liver was the entire size of my chest, and it was nothing but tumors.

Alex has metastatic colon adenocarcinoma.

So this is a cancer that started in the colon, and then spread to another organ, in Alex's case, to his liver. So this is a a stage four cancer or a cancer that moved from one place through the bloodstream and landed in another place.

She arrived in my room and told me that she would be my oncologist and immediately took hold of the situation.

She emphasized for, you know, being so young, thirty-four, with, colon cancer that had metastasized in a very limited timeline.

She'd just gone to a conference that involved the drug that essentially saved my life.

You're continually learning in oncology, and that's a really important piece of being able to deliver that care to the patient that's sitting in front of you. We also do have a very active research department, so we try to bring trials here for patients. So when, you know, there's a question, is there something better out there than the current standard of care? Then, a lot of times, clinical trials will be developed to try to answer that question. At Baptist, we're fortunate to have a robust research department to try to bring those trials and those potential new therapies to our patients.

She got my regimen started immediately, and so I think it was about six or seven treatments when she had me re-imaged.

And I mean, my liver, again, you go from looking like a stone wall here in Kentucky to what happened, like, is that my liver? It's actually the size it's supposed to be.

Fortunately, he had a really remarkable response to his initial treatment, and so he was reassessed by a few additional specialists and underwent a surgery. He subsequently had a second surgery, and now he's back on chemotherapy.

I was undetectable for cancer for three months after almost dying. The fact that I'm still sitting here is remarkable. I know that doctor Jackson, I have a lot of respect for her. I don't think I'd be alive without her.

Alex was very young at the time of his cancer diagnosis. And, so I think it's important for patients to be aware, you know, cancer can strike even in your twenties or your thirties. And so if you have a symptom that you're worried about, you know, it is really important to go and see your doctor and bring that up.

This is hard.

It takes it out on you mentally, takes it out on you physically.

There's a lot of grief that comes along with it.

Taking a philanthropical approach to combating this disease is the best use of my time that I have left.

It doesn't take much to go and get screened, but it takes a lot to fight cancer.

Alex has done just a really, you know, wonderful job of committing to the cancer treatments. My hope as a cancer oncologist is that I'm helping Alex to live that best life.

Do you realize what's important and what's not important? My wife and my stepson are definitely the two most important people in my life.

It's a bit ironic to have to go through the most difficult thing in your life to find out that you're the happiest in your life.

I've had options to go other places and I don't want to. If you choose Baptist Health, you are choosing the best in health care that you can get.

♪ [music] ♪ I'm Pam Durbin. I am a registered nurse. I've been married to the love of my life for 43 years. We have three grown children and four grandchildren. In 2013, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I opted to have a double mastectomy with reconstructive surgery.

Three years later, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and had a total hysterectomy, and they were certain that they had gotten all of the cancer. The washings, the lymph nodes, they were all clear, but I continued to do all the follow-ups. In October of 2021, I started having some abdominal pain. So we went up to the emergency room, met this wonderful ER doctor, Dr. Dugger.

The cancer in the endometrium had spread and I was diagnosed with metastatic endometrial cancer. We got chemo started right away, and then in March of this year, I had a PET scan and it showed no evidence of active disease. We were shocked that the chemo was able to knock it out as well as it did.

So, now I'm in the point where I'm going for a CAT scan every three months to make sure that it is staying at bay. The care that I received at Baptist LaGrange was outstanding. And it didn't disappoint when I was admitted to Baptist Louisville. It was just top-notch care.

I think the care that I've received through Baptist Health has been world-class. You know, I just feel grateful that my life is now centered around living, and not trying to stay alive. I appreciate being able to quilt again. When I was going through chemo, that was a little hard for me.

I'm passionate about quilting because it allows the creative side of my brain to work in a way that the nursing side of my brain does not. So I'm really glad that, you know, I'm able to do that again. And then my grandchildren...having grandchildren is just a totally different love, and what a lovely, lovely thing it is.

I'm feeling great, I feel so blessed that, you know, I have another opportunity to have a little bit longer life. ♪ [music] ♪

I've never had any health issues prior.

The day something went wrong, I had a major seizure.

I looked at my older brother and my arm locked up. Something wasn't right. He got me on the grounds.

The next day I know I woke up in the hospital. I know the whole family was here, and people were scared. Did a MRI and a CT scan, and they found a tumor. So they said that this the tumor caused the seizure. So they wanted to give me seizure medicine, and eventually look into doing a removal.

Came home probably three days later, had another minor seizure, and they were like, alright. We're not gonna take any more chances, with any more seizures, so we're taking this thing out.

So the tumor was a golf ball sized, astro Cytoma.

The type of cancer Jay has, we call it high grade Astro Cytoma. In Jay's case, once we had the diagnosis, we all sat together, we discussed with our colleagues in the field, and we came up with a treatment regimen that included chemotherapy and radiation. The surgeons take out what they see, chemotherapy circulates through the whole bloodstream and covers the whole body, and radiation is really helpful for that sort of local regional extra dose, extra boost to help prevent tumor coming back locally.

So anytime that you're dealing with radiation therapy in a sensitive structure and, like, what more sensitive structure can you think of than the brain, you want to treat only as much as you have to. And so by having more sophisticated technologies with imaging, with alignment, verification, safety checks, it can really help spare normal parts of the brain from risk of long term toxicity.

And at the time, he was having tons of mobility issues, after the surgery and because of the tumor.

After the surgery, I was paralyzed from my whole left side. I couldn't move my fingers. Terrifying. Can't feel your toes.

And that's kinda where I met Ashley.

With Jay, he was so focused in the moment of wanting to get better and doing anything, even if it was hard, even if it was tough, even if he was sweating bullets. That's a really big testament of just, like, staying focused in the moment, having small goals as well as big goals. As soon as he was able to advance that foot forward, even in sitting or standing, I'm like, okay. We're gonna be walking in no time.

Coming from being an athlete, I was super competitive.

My my, go to phrase was be a faucet, not a drain.

It's for myself.

I'm a drain them, so I don't wanna be a burden.

Yeah. That make people care about you. You can't just lay down.

You gotta fight back.

The good thing about Baptist Health in Louisville is that we are at forefront of these newer treatments. So if you come here, you will get the best of care in oncology. We have all the expertise. We have all the expert people. We have clinical trials. We have all the recent advancement, latest technologies.

We have it right here in our city.

It's about human kindness, decency, and dignity. It is a privilege to be able to help.

I've I've had four MRIs that have been cleared cancer free. Bigger and better. Homeward and upward is what I've been saying. Yeah. If anybody can see, doesn't get any kind of inspiration or any kind of hope.

You got it.

I have been married to my husband for thirty four years. We have two sons. We have one grandson. We're an empty nester with six dogs now.

We do a trip of a lifetime every year. Because you never know how long your lifetime's gonna be. It was March twenty twenty two. I had a abnormal mammogram. Ended up having a biopsy maybe the first week of April twenty twenty two. It was a Thursday afternoon. I was out driving and I got a phone call from my nurse practitioner's office and she said, I just want to tell you that your biopsy came back and it was positive for cancer.

And I'm like, What? When your first inclination when you have cancer in your body is, Just take them off. Just get rid of it. Get rid of it. I don't want to have any cancer in my body.

Baptist Health Hardin gave me a lot of options, and I felt comfortable with those options. Went through four sessions of chemo, which were three weeks apart. Then afterwards, about six weeks later, I had surgery, had a lumpectomy.

Everything came back contained except for one millimeter of possible DCIS, which is precancerous. I was really scared about the whole radiation thing.

I approach things in a very systematic way when I explain why we're doing something.

And when people know the why, the how becomes less intimidating.

When they understand the risks of not doing something, they understand that the road to getting to where they need to be isn't such a bad thing. And by the time they meet me, many patients have already gone through something that's pretty scary. In her case, she'd already been through surgery.

Doctor Porter was as calm and as patient as he could be with me.

When I first met Laura, she was optimistic. She had hope, which is really, really important in anyone's cancer journey. When we deliver radiation, we deliver a low enough dose to allow normal tissue to be able to repair, but a high enough dose to where we can kill cancer cells when that dose accumulates over the course of four weeks or so.

So for four weeks, I went for radiation every single day. Everybody was just so kind and I just felt like, you know, we were family.

Radiation plus breast conserving therapy is equivalent to undergoing a mastectomy. And so we were instrumental in being able to help not only her oncologic outcome, which is decreasing the likelihood of cancer coming back, but the ability of her to, keep her breasts. And so that was a goal of treatment.

By then my hair was growing back in. I kind of felt like I was on the other side at that point. When they told me that I would be going to the lymphedema clinic, I said, we're not really removing that many lymphs. I went and she said, I'm going to see you for the next five years.

Well, I feel like Tara's a friend. She was able to educate a lot of people. She educated me, which I thought, I'm not going to have it, and we do. She said, From now on, anytime you travel or you're going to be sedentary for more than a few hours, I want you to wear a sleeve.

I said, What happens if somebody can't afford a sleeve? How much would it cost for you to keep four or five of each sleeve in stock?

And she said, Probably about five thousand dollars and I thought, I bet I could raise five thousand dollars. We ended up raising thirty seven thousand dollars that went the Lymphedema Clinic. They have a really valuable place in our cancer world there.

You know, everybody from, you know, the front desk to the techs to the nurses to the physicians and the physician's assistant, you know, were great. They were great. And they treated me like a person. I wasn't just a number coming in there. I feel like the standard of care here was as good as I was going to get anywhere. And at Baptist Health Hardin, I'm close to home.

The team here at Baptist Health Hardin is absolutely outstanding. I put our team up against any team in the country. And this is a patient centered practice. And that's not just within radiation oncology, it's within our entire oncology program.

I think you just have to talk to people. You have to talk to people because otherwise it's a big scary disease. And I think that Baptist Health Hardin really helped make that journey a lot easier. I think I actually have a better quality of life than I did before because I don't take it for granted.

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 2021, 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's 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 on the side of caution.

They 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 gets 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 leaving 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.

I was a nurse, worked for the county UMC in Las Vegas for twenty five years and was able to retire early and, come back home. I thought, great. Got this little house. We can pack it up, take off, travel, and then, you know, I found the spot.

My doctor called me, and she gave me that diagnosis over the phone. She said, do you have a preference? Do you have a physician? And I said, no.

I'm back home, new to the area. Again, I don't know of anyone. Who do you recommend? And she said I recommended Doctor McCormick for surgery in the Baptist Cancer Center.

I said, that's fine. And within an hour, I got the phone call and everything was scheduled.

I was able to get in and get this taken care of and get on with life.

When I first met Nancy, she was somebody who was very motivated. She had this approach that she was gonna beat this no matter what. Nancy came to me with a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer, which means that there are cancer cells that are arising from the duct and invading below the very lowest layer of the duct tissue.

I was scared at first when I first went to see them because you don't know what they're gonna tell you.

And then I had surgery and that was good, and when I got the Oncotype results back, that was even better. Oncotype is when they take the tumor, they send it off to be tested. If it comes back, twenty-five percent likely recurrence or more, you get chemo. If it's twenty-five or less, you don't.

Mine was at fifteen, so I was very blessed.

Six weeks of radiation and, hormone blocker.

When we talk about treating breast cancer, early detection is key. When we're able to catch cancers in an earlier stage, we're able to provide more treatment options.

Every breast cancer is a little bit different and so I don't necessarily try to tell a patient what they need to have done, but rather listen to the patient and figure out what's gonna work best for them, what's gonna make them the most comfortable and then allow them to really choose and kinda help guide them through those decisions.

A lot of times you get a diagnosis then If there's films or lab work, you have to pick your films up, you have to take them to your appointment, if they if you're lucky to get in within a week or two weeks.

No. They were fast and they were good.

Breast cancer is something that's very common. It's gonna affect up to one in eight women. At Baptist Health Floyd, we do have a comprehensive breast program. It involves not only myself on the surgical arm, arm, but also medical oncology with radiation oncology, physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, geneticists.

We all work together. One of the people who helps us do that is the breast cancer nurse navigator.

A nurse navigator is with you with each appointment with oncology and surgery and radiation.

They sit and they explain it to you, take all the time in the world.

It's like a well-oiled machine, and it flows. They took such good care of me. I mean, I had no complaints. I just hope I was as good to my patients as they how they were to me.

I'm definitely blessed to be working here at Baptist Health Floyd in this nationally accredited breast program.

The best part about Baptist Health Floyd, it's a world-class breast center that you have in your own backyard.

So you can have these treatments close to home where you have family close by and they'll be able to take care of you as well as allow us to take care of you.

I believe that God puts us where we're supposed to be. I believe that's why I came home, not so much because of retirement, because I had breast cancer, and I was well taken care of.