Phyllis Ellis: My name is Phyllis Ellis and I am a cancer survivor. I felt a lump in my left breast so I went to the doctor and I went to my GYN and when I got the mammogram I went on vacation and because I didn’t hear anything. I never got the report so I didn’t think it was nothing. They said if you don’t hear nothing - no news is good news. So I thought I had good news.
I came back, I still hadn’t heard anything, and then I went to my GYN and she said, “You know you got to get it taken out”. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I knew I had a lump there but I didn’t know that I had to get it taken out. I didn’t know that I was walking around with the cancer in me - I didn’t know that.
So she sent me to the surgeon and I asked him - what was my choice? He said, he did a biopsy and he said, “I am not going to kid around with you, you have cancer”. I said, “What?” That was the worst feeling that anybody can feel because you feel like ‘I am going to die’, and I got too much to do to die, I said, “I got a grandchild and I have things I have to do”.
I said, “What are my options?” He was going to do a mastectomy. I mean it was no compassion at all. It was very cold, and then I went to another hospital because I was searching then and they told me the same stuff. My sister, you know, she was looking at the television and she had seen the commercial on TV. She said, “I want you to just go to this place. I saw it on TV, just check this out”. So I said I have been everywhere else, I am going to try this.
When I went to Cancer Treatment Centers it was like an invisible red carpet that was rolled out for me, everybody greeted me like they knew me, they didn’t even know me. I mean they were so warm. Every time I walk in the door everybody knew my name. I wasn’t like a number. They gave me a total body scan. They knew me better than I knew myself when they finished with me, and then they came and they sat down me. It wasn’t three weeks; it was right away.
They got everything together and they came to me and they sat down and they expressed to me, they told me what they needed to do. They told me they were just going to do a lumpectomy and they expressed what that was. They said they were going to take the lump out and they were going to save my breasts.
When they told me what they were going to do for me, I had hope. I knew that I was going to live and they expressed to me that they’ll be with me every step of the way and I knew that I was going to win. They took me by the hand because I was there alone, as far as my family, but they were my family. They were my adopted family. They treated me like family.
I know what it is to be afraid but if you come here you can rest assure that they are going to be with you every step of the way. It’s not like the other places where you have gone. You have hope at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.