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 the diagnosis over the phone. She said, do you have a preference? Do you have a physician? I said, no.
I'm back 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. Oncotyping 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 a 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, you know, 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, 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's 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.
