Lynnette Bisconti: Three weeks after I discovered I was pregnant, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The first things that the surgeon said to me when he came into the room at the time, he looked at me and he said, “You have cancer and you have to abort the baby immediately because the pregnancy will probably fuel the cancer and so you need to do this to save your life.”
I went to one more hospital, because I wasn’t willing to give up. I walked into Cancer Treatment Centers of America, still with a little tiny bit of hope left and I walked in there and people were smiling and saying hello to me and I thought this isn’t like anything I’ve seen yet.
Narrator: Nearly two decodes ago, a man who had tragically lost his mother to cancer vowed to change the face of cancer care.
Richard J Stephenson: My mother that died of this disease that so galvanized our spirit and said, “This ugly thing has to change. This has to change and it has to change now.” And we are unrelenting in our focus in my mother’s memory on changing the ugly face of cancer today. We’ve done it with what you will see is the most extraordinary advanced set of tools in modern American cancer therapy.
Narrator: Richard J Stephenson’s commitment to the Mother Standard became the guiding principal at Cancer Treatment Centers of America hospitals. The Mother Standard exceeds the gold standard of care and demands we treat every patient with the same warmth and caring that we would offer our own mothers, fathers, brothers, or sisters.
What began in Chicago, Illinois grew to the northwest, to the southwest, and to the northeast. New hospitals became established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each center was designed and built in a completely innovative way, by patients for patients.
We combine the beauty and comfort that patients are seeking together with a compressive array of treatment options all under one roof. CTCA has built a nationwide reputation for bringing the best, most experienced medical staff together with the latest therapies and cutting-edge technologies.
Based on patient input we’ve streamlined processes to minimize wait times and provide faster diagnosis, answers in hours instead of days or weeks. Our physicians take a very active team approach. They meet several times a week to discuss the patient’s progress, and treatment options.
Lynnette Bisconti: I met with all of these people who formed this wonderful support team around me and all of these people said to me, “We’re going to be on your team, but you’re going to be in the center calling the shots.”
Nancy Brinker: Koman and CTCA are partners in promise, the promise of those with cancer. You can not just treat a tumor you have to treat the whole patient.
Lynnette Bisconti: I didn’t want to give my cancer over to somebody else, I wanted to live. It’s my choice, it’s my decision and I wanted to be the one who decided to live. The best thing to come out of my experience, obviously, my son is the best thing to come out of my experience.
Richard J Stephenson: Cancer Treatment Centers of America has brought world-class medicine unlike anything we’ve ever seen in this part of the world to the patient’s bed-side now. And together we will win this fight against cancer everyday.