Audrey Allen

It was a total shock when I got a call on my cell phone on my way home from work and the nurse on the other end of the line told me I had breast cancer. I had no symptoms, and although the doctors had told me on two mammograms prior to this one that they thought something didn’t look right, they didn’t seem concerned at all. And because they didn’t seem concerned, I wasn’t concerned. In fact, I was six months late on this mammogram. Why hadn’t they raised a red flag, marked my health history to watch, something?

That’s the first reason why I have no desire to be treated for my cancer in Georgia. The second reason is that after I found out I had cancer and had undergone a lumpectomy to remove the tumor, neither the oncologist I saw nor the radiologist in Georgia wanted to listen to me at all.

When I was talking to the radiologist, I’d been given some information on two procedures – mammosite and Brachytherapy. I wanted brachy, because I didn’t think the mammosite procedure would work well with my size breast. The radiologist dismissed my wishes, telling me I was crazy, and told me he’d give me one mammosite treatment and if it didn’t work well, he’d go to standard external beam radiation.

When I was talking to the oncologist, I tried to tell him I’d taken a probiotic formula for a while as a body detox and had later learned it was known to compromise the immune system and also had a cancer link. This made me leery of having chemotherapy until we found out whether anything was going on in my blood. But, he also dismissed my fears and went on with what he was going to do. I walked out and never went back.

Watching television late one night, I saw a commercial for Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), recognized it from some ads I’d seen in magazines when I worked in a health food store, and decided I needed to call.

From the moment I called CTCA in January 2005, everything happened quickly. In a few short days, they flew me and a caregiver to Tulsa, where I met with a team of physicians and clinicians, had a group of tests and received results, all within three days. I was so incredibly impressed. It takes weeks for something similar back in Savannah. Everything was under one roof. All the members of my care team were talking to one another. Not like back home, where I might decide I needed a nutritionist, but that person wouldn’t be talking to my oncologist. I might decide I needed a naturopath, but that person wouldn’t be talking to my oncologist either. There would be no communication between people taking care of me and that could result in conflict, duplication, mistakes. At CTCA, that doesn’t happen, because there’s ongoing communication between the disciplines.

I was a candidate for and decided to have the Brachytherapy. When that was completed, I went home to Savannah. My surgeon’s office called to have me make a follow-up appointment with them. When I went in and told me surgeon that I’d decided to do my cancer treatment at CTCA but wondered if he’d still be my surgeon and doctor in Savannah, he was angry and pretty much declined to answer me. Don’t doctors have to take a vow to want what’s best for their patients no matter where the patient is receiving the care? I felt like he simply blew me off.

My next trip back to CTCA, Dr. Ketterl, my oncologist, and I discussed chemotherapy, but decided there was no benefit to it at this point. She tested my blood, which neither the oncologist nor the radiologist in Savannah had done, and found that my white blood count was low from the probiotic, so I’d been right about refusing the chemotherapy back in Savannah. It could have had disastrous results. Dr. Kelly, my radiologist, and Dr. Ketterl explained my next options to me of either taking a pre or post-menopausal follow-up medication. I chose to have my ovaries out and take the post-menopausal medication.

Again, this is why CTCA is so wonderful. In Savannah, the doctors wanted me in a cookie cutter position with my cancer – surgery, radiation, chemotherapy – never considering what might be going on in my body or what I might want. At CTCA, I’m treated as an individual, given options for me to choose from. The naturopath I saw at CTCA discovered that among the supplements I was taking, there were some with estrogen properties, which I wouldn’t have known, and since my cancer was estrogen-positive, she changed out some of the things I was taking and gave me things that were better for me at this time. I was already eating healthily, but the nutritionist on my care team helped me even more, putting me on 80 percent raw fruits and vegetables and only 20 percent cooked food.

I believe God directed me here, and that He has been with me through the entire process. I trust Him with my life, my health, my tests, my results and my future. He, my husband and two children and my church family have been so supportive. And CTCA has been wonderful, caring for me as a person and not just herding me through.

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