Toby Frey: I was getting a routine physical and at my family doctor, and I had had a bump on my neck, scheduled me in for 45 minutes for an out-patient surgery and something easy-in, easy-out. Of course I was waking up three hours later and hearing strange words, the big ‘C’ word – cancer and the doctors were talking to my wife at the bedside and I was coming out of it and I was hearing the ‘cancer’ word and I thought I am in the wrong room. They are in the wrong room. They are talking about somebody else. I am here for something simple.
When that hit me that they were talking about my life expectancy then I was you know, I started to fall apart there in that chair, in that bed. It was just unbelievable. It was just inconceivable that I had gone on in – a healthy guy – and come out a wreck.
They sent me home, said, “Go home, and take it easy this weekend. Don’t worry about it. We will get you in next week.” Well that’s kind of worst thing you could do is tell somebody you had cancer and then don’t worry about it.
We had been given the phone number for Cancer Treatment Center of America by a gal, a friend of ours, at the hospital. We called that number and visited with those people and they had us on a flight the next Tuesday, come for a second opinion.
My doctors back home – they gave me the option. They said I could go to another place, another town, have some radiation if I wanted but they were not real gung-ho about fighting this.
Cancer Treatment Centers of America – they utilized everything at their disposal to fight for you, but everything else is there for you – diet, nutrition and spiritual health, you know doctors come and go but the theory and the thought and the love and the care that goes behind it, that’s what gets the job done.
This is not a normal hospital. This is a place that loves you, takes you under their wing. They are concerned with what happens to you. They are concerned with what happens to you five years down the road. What a novel idea?
I owe Cancer Treatment Centers of America my life. Without that place, without going there I have doubts that I would be in this seat today.