Caldwell Crawford: The difference between my earlier treatment and being at the Cancer Treatment Center was like day and night where before I would come in periodically, I would get a shot. They would say, “How do you feel?” I said, “I feel fine”, and that was it. That was the end of the day.
Well, when I got at the Cancer Treatment Center one of the first things they did was to show me that by my thoughts, by what I ate, the things I did – all these things had an affect on defeating the cancer and you are a participant; you are the center you know, you are like the main guy and everybody there is just kind of supporting you and moving you along in the direction that you are trying to get to. And there’s encouragement at every point and I’d say what really blew our mind is somebody goes, says, “You know what, you need a hug”, and here comes a big old hug.
There was another thing I later found out is that they had a team and this team would meet regularly to discuss your case. They would ask certain questions to get my mind thinking about certain things and then they would take that feedback and they would come back and see what it was that they needed to do to boost me in this area, boost me in that area. But if you don’t ask a person what’s going on with them, how are you going to know?
The staff was all aware of what I was dealing with. ‘Oh, are you getting what you need and everything’, and somebody is always checking to see if you needed anything, ‘can we do something else to make a little bit better for you?’
The way I was always taught before was that everything was in the doctor’s hands; you were just a passive participant. What I have come to understand is that hope is really the driving force in cancer treatment. Because of the hope that this organization is able to steer people, is able to get them to change the way they eat, to change the way they think, to change the things they do to make an effective fight against the cancer.
Their hope is like the engine that drives everything else. Every time your thoughts go down you are giving cancer strength to take over. Gone through the treatment and everything I have been able to return to working and the things that I love, which is outside in the energy environment doing some pretty challenging stuff and it’s refreshing to tell people that my office is 300 feet up in the air.
Had I not had the setbacks that I had that led me to be here and treated at the Cancer Treatment Center, I don’t think I would be here.