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♪ - [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]

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