It was 9/11/01, I was at the Dr.'s office, and I was crying because my sons were old enough to go to war and I knew what we were watching on the TV's mean war! We were being attacked on American soil! As the Dr. came in, he saw me crying and said "Well, I suppose you know.", I said, "know what?". He said, "You have cancer!". That's how I received that awful news. I knew I had no choice but to go to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY. I was horrified. My mother went their and it was a dirty, filthy, smelly hospital!
When I got to Roswell though, what I found was a brand new state of the arts hospital. They had imploded the old one and built this brand new hospital. I had no insurance and ended up with the number one breast cancer surgeon in the country. He told me that if Roswell treated me different than someone with all the insurance in the world it would be his last day! I never forgot him saying that! I ended up having one more surgery, chemo and radiation.
We lived between Rochester, NY and Buffalo, NY and so after getting mapped out for Radiation, my husband thought this was funny and he drew a road on me, a car and wrote Rochester at one end and Buffalo at the other end. The Radiologist thought this was funny and drew a plane and some birds on me! they communicated like this for weeks. One day, I was unhappy and the Radiologist knew it and asked why. I told him, they were going to repo my car. Long story short...he paid my car payment! I tried to pay it back and he just said...consider it a gift! I was so touched!
Cancer came back in 2004 and ended up with a mastectomy with a TRAM flap reconstruction at the same time. Eight surgeries later I was given a clean bill of health! It has been 10 years now and I am still cancer free.
Sparta, NC