When I found out that I had cancer, I decided that I was going to make cancer the best thing that ever happened to me, not the worst. At 39 years old I was diagnosed with stage IIIB breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. I’d been told the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and bloodstream, and I had a 49 percent survival rate. I was not about to accept those odds!
My husband, Michael, had lost his dad to colon cancer two years earlier and he was determined it wasn’t going to happen to me. He went online and learned about the integrative care offered at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). He spoke with an Oncology Information Specialist about the program at CTCA and within a couple of hours, he had set up an appointment for me and announced that we were flying to Chicago. It was more than 2,000 miles from my home in Vernonia, Oregon, outside of Portland, but the distance didn’t faze me in the least. I wanted to live, and I was going to do what it took to make sure I survived.
My first day at CTCA at Midwestern Regional Medical Center, I knew I was in the right place. They offered me so much more than my local doctors had. I underwent a variety of diagnostic tests to help my care team determine where the cancer was in my body and how we needed to treat it. When I met my oncologist, Dr. Citrin, he told me we were going to attack my cancer from every direction possible. My treatment plan consisted of three different chemotherapy drugs delivered in fractionated doses every three weeks, eight weeks of radiation that included TomoTherapy® radiation (given by another one of my favorites, Dr. Eden), and two final doses of chemo. A complete hysterectomy was recommended and performed by Dr. Williams once these treatments were completed.
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