Dorothy: [00:00:00] Today’s episode will sound a little different. That’s because I was invited to be a part of CanCare’s podcast, which is called Hope in the Face of Cancer. It’s hosted by President and CEO Darcie Wells, who you have heard on our podcast in episode 286. During our conversation today, we talk about The Rose’s journey to serving over a million Texans across 43 counties. We’ll talk about disparities in healthcare, why we should expand breast health screening to include younger women, and much, much more.
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Let’s Talk About Your [00:01:00] Breast, a different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose, a breast center of excellence, and a Texas treasure. You’re gonna hear frank discussions about tough topics, and you’re gonna learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
Darcie: Welcome to Hope In the Face of Cancer, where we share real stories of courageous people in their cancer journey. Today we are thrilled to welcome Dorothy Gibbons. The co founder and CEO of The Rose, a center of breast health excellence. Since its launch in 1986, The Rose has served nearly 1 million patients and is now the leading non profit breast health organization in Southeast Texas.
Dorothy is a fierce advocate for women’s health. Ensuring that every woman has access to life saving mammograms, [00:02:00] diagnostic services, and treatment. She’s here today to share her story, discuss the mission of The Rose, and offer insights on how we can all contribute to better health outcomes. Dorothy, it’s a privilege to have you here today. Welcome to Hope in the Face of Cancer.
Dorothy: Oh my goodness, it’s an honor to be with you, Darcie.
Darcie: Oh, and I love your pink. It’s fantastic. It looks great.
Dorothy: Thank you. We have a lot of pink.
Darcie: We do. I’m sure your closet is very well outfitted in pink. So many of our listeners, you know, we have listeners all around the country and even around the world, and they may not be familiar with The Rose. So can you start out by just sharing a little bit about the organization and what services it provides?
Dorothy: Yeah, The Rose is a non profit breast cancer organization, but we provide direct services. And that includes mammograms, and ultrasounds, and diagnostic workups, and biopsies, and physician consults, and we serve both insured and uninsured women.
[00:03:00] Now, the important part of The Rose and what our mission is all wrapped around is that when that uninsured woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, then we find ways to get them into treatment. And that is, you know, there’s no reason for us to screen anyone if we can’t get them into treatment.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: We serve about 40,000 women a year. We do it through, and men, women and men.
Darcie: Yes.
Dorothy: We do it through our two diagnostic centers, which are Houston based and through our five mobile mammography coaches, which cover 43 counties in Southeast Texas. So this is a a local organization serving local, but also regionally, and many of our programs have been replicated in other cities.
Darcie: Oh, it’s truly incredible what you’ve accomplished since you [00:04:00] founded the organization. And I would love to go back and let’s kind of rewind 39 years. Tell us about how The Rose got started, your initial vision, because what you’ve created is so phenomenal. I would imagine it’s been quite the journey, but what prompted this 39 years ago?
Dorothy: Darcie, I’m going to tell you, there was no initial vision. There was no way I had these ideas that I would ever be in a non profit. I was working as the PR marketing person at Bayshore, uh, at Pasadena Bayshore Hospital, which was the 10th largest hospital at the time, general hospital. Yeah. I did all the, all the regular kind of things. And in 1983, Dr. Dixie Melillo came on board. She was our first female doctor to be on staff. Now you gotta remember, 83.
Darcie: Yeah, 83. Yeah.
Dorothy: And only like 3 [00:05:00] percent of all the women who graduated as physicians were, uh, are all the physicians that graduated with women and almost none that were general surgeons. In the hospital setting, that general surgeon, Rules the Roost, and here we had this female who was drop dead good looking and had a—
Darcie: Shaking things up!
Dorothy: Oh I mean, she had such a, such a personality, you wouldn’t believe it. She never went anywhere without her lipstick. I mean, it was, you know, she, she was like five foot seven or three inch heels and when she walked down the hall, everybody, everybody noticed her.
But the thing was she had this incredible passion about breast cancer and she had been the primary resident in the Galveston Breast Health Center. So she saw all kinds of breast cancer, convinced the — She convinced our administrator that we needed a dedicated Breast Center. And [00:06:00] that was kind of where all of this, some of this started.
But the thing you have to know is Dixie never went anywhere alone. She dragged me to death. Usually I was the driver. Because she hated driving in Houston, and we did all these educational talks, and we were, you know, we thought we were really doing something. But at one of these meetings, she drag me to a conference where Rose Kushner was one of the speakers.
Darcie: Okay.
Dorothy: Rose Kushner was the, was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun. She was the first female journalist to cover Vietnam. She stood about five feet tall, very proud of her Jewish heritage and had a mouth on her that would embarrass anyone. So she, when she found the lump in her breast in 1979, her doctor said, Oh Rose, don’t worry about this. Women are always getting lumps in their breasts and we’ll just go ahead and do [00:07:00] your biopsy and if it is malignant, we’ll come out and tell your husband Harvey. Now this is Rose Kushner. She said, What do you mean you’re going to come out and tell my husband Harvey? Then what are you doing? They said, well, then we’ll do your mastectomy.
She said, no, do I have a say in this? I’m going to make this decision. I’m going to decide what you do with my boobs. And I mean, you know, it was like that for her, she knew better. Well, it was 16 surgeons later. Can you imagine that happening? 16 surgeons later before she found someone that would wake her up, tell her the results and let her make the decision about her breast.
Now, of course it was malignant. And in a journalist frame of mind, she went to work at educating women, uh, wrote a, an incredible book that was in lay people’s understanding language [00:08:00] and it was called, it had to be called alternatives because when she put the word breast in its title to begin with, it never saw the light of day. It stayed in the back rooms of bookstores.
Darcie: Gosh, don’t talk about it. Yeah.
Dorothy: Yes. I had read the book, she was a hero, you know, I just thought, my gosh, look at all she’s doing, and she was going to be on this panel, so I wrote her a letter, remember, to our young listeners, this was before email. I wrote her a letter, and I said, Dear Rose, would you please, uh, have coffee with us?
Dr. Melillo and I would love to talk to you about what we’re doing in Houston, Texas. Well, she wrote back and said, you know, I have a, I have a dinner, I have a evening open. Let’s have dinner together. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I’m gonna have dinner with Rose Kushner. Oh, I was so excited. So I get to dinner and there’s Harvey and, and Rose and Dixie and me.
And Dixie is in her [00:09:00] best suit, you know, and she is, I mean, remember, she’s a general surgeon. She has a lot of presence. And so she’s going on and on about all this education we’re doing in the Houston community, all the speeches we’ve done, all the talks. And then Rose kind of leaned into her space. You don’t do that with doctors.
Leaned into her space and said, Well, tell me, Dixie, after you do all that educating, what are you doing with those women? And Dixie said, well, that’s a problem. Right now, we’re seeing so many uninsured. You have to remember, in the mid 80s, this was the time of the oil bust. There were more foreclosures during those three, four years than ever in Texas history. People were losing their jobs. They were losing, you know, their insurance, they did not know how they were going to live. So, we were seeing a lot of late stage advanced breast cancer that had already [00:10:00] erupted through the skin. And for those women, there was no hope. Yeah. So anyway, so Dixie said, well, that’s just it.
We have so many uninsured and we have no one that’ll take them. I keep trying to get the hospital to do free care. Well, at that point, Rose really leaned into her space and said, Dixie, quit your pissing and moaning and get off your Duff, we use in public, that’s not what she said, and go start yourself a non profit. Darcie, I guarantee you neither one of us had that in mind.
Darcie: Right.
Dorothy: You know, I was on HCA’s faculty, I saw myself going up that little ladder. Dixie was a general surgeon doing all kinds of surgeries, starting her practice. I mean, this was not something we were going to do. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Rose called me every Friday. What have you done about your non profit?
Darcie: [00:11:00] Wow, talk about an accountability partner that you didn’t ask for.
Dorothy: What congressman, because there were no women then, what congressman have you called to get this medicare bill passed? I don’t know a congressperson, what are you talking about? So every Friday I had to come up with some excuse. Of course I was working full time, you know, we had, uh, we were still doing all our talks.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And But finally, I gave in. I wrote the, uh, application for a non profit status. We had our approval in seven days.
Darcie: Wow.
Dorothy: That doesn’t happen.
Darcie: I’d heard of, yeah.
Dorothy: So I, I wrote Rose another letter, and I said, Rose, we’ve got our non profit status now, and we’ve decided to call this place The Rose as a living tribute to you. And what you need to know is my maiden name was Rose, Dixie’s married name at the time was Rose, [00:12:00] and we had met Rose Kushner.
Darcie: Wow.
Dorothy: And what were we going to call this place?
Darcie: Yes. That’s amazing.
Dorothy: So, of course, Rose being Rose, picked up the phone, called me, once she got the letter and said, What the hell do I need a living tribute for? I was like, what? You know, she, she died before she got to see either of our centers. And Harvey, her husband, always told me that whenever she had a chance, she would talk about a place in Houston, Texas that was, doing what they could to take care of the uninsured, and I know she would’ve been proud of it.
Darcie: Absolutely.
Dorothy: But that’s how we got started. You know? Of course. Now we had our nonprofit status, and of course then we had to raise money, right?
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: So the way that we raised money for The Rose to open it up was through a bachelor’s auction.
Darcie: Oh my goodness.
Dorothy: We sold men [00:13:00] to make money for cancer. Um, we made a whole $7,000. Dixie brought her ex, sold him. We had every doctor that was single, sold all of them. Uh, but that $7,000 and I donated a mammography machine, which was top of the line. That’s how we got started. That’s how we opened our place. We paid 3 for each insured lady that walked through our doors and our uninsured women, uh, you know, they didn’t have a charge. So our rent went off what we served in our insured women. $3 for each woman. That is our story.
Darcie: That is incredible. What I mean, the things that you had to go through to get that, that started and even your own reticence. I mean, I’m so glad for her, you know, pushing you in that direction, uh, to [00:14:00] get it off the ground.
Tell us about those early years. Um, and.
Dorothy: Well, I stayed working while you stayed at the hospital for a while.
Darcie: Mm-Hmm.
Dorothy: I volunteered. I did all the administrative. We had a great, great technologist who made sure we were all in line and did those kind of things. But you know, Darcie, I love telling the story of Rose. Because in everyone’s life, you need a Rose.
Darcie: Yes.
Dorothy: And everyone’s like, you need one, or you need to be one. And I’m not sure that I’ve always stuck to that and been that person. But anytime I hear someone with a dream, I’m gonna say to them, you go for it. Tell me how you’re doing it. You can do it. If anyone had told me back then that, oh, there was no way we could get it done, I still would have tried. But because she had such belief in us, then there was no way I could fail her.
Darcie: Yeah. It makes me think about our survivor volunteers and, and the role that they play in the lives of people facing cancer. [00:15:00] You know, it’s sometimes they have to believe for our clients because they don’t have the belief in themselves that they can get through this.
Dorothy: It gives me chills. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, I, when we opened our center, uh, it was 915 square feet. Now I want you to envision that if you can.
Darcie: Right. Yeah.
Dorothy: A little small. And our, our front desk folks were volunteers who were patients of, uh, Dr. Dixie’s. They were both breast cancer survivors. One was a stage four, told she would not live a year. She went on to live 12. You know, we always said we don’t go by the statistics. We don’t believe in those. And, uh, our only paid employee was our technologist for those first four or five years. And then finally, I received a, uh, I wrote all the grants, of course, and all the other stuff like that.
Darcie: Chief cook and bottle washer.
Dorothy: No, listen, we even had a washer dryer back then. You [00:16:00] washed your gowns and things. I had, I had a technologist once who was vacuuming and saying, I don’t even do this at home. I mean, you know, I was.
Darcie: But they believed in what you were doing.
Dorothy: Yeah, we were very grassroots, very hands on. Um, but it wasn’t long before we had to keep growing because in the beginning, MD Anderson would take most anyone that we thought had a problem, and then it became you had to prove they had a problem, so that meant we had to start doing biopsies.
Things kind of changed, and it was pretty, you know, It was really apparent to us from the get go that we were going to need women who had the ability to pay or had insurance. You’ve got to remember, back in 1985, 86, Medicare did not cover screening mammograms. You had to pay that out of pocket. Back then it was 50 bucks at The Rose.
And we had, you know, it’s always [00:17:00] been ironic to me that we’re sitting in the shadow of the medical center and still The Rose is needed. If anyone had said to me back then, where do you think you’re going to be in 38, 40 years, I would have said, Oh, cancer will have, there’ll be a care for cancer. And, you know, there won’t be a need for The Rose anymore because we’ll have a better way to handle the uninsured and the poor parts of our community.
But that hadn’t happened. And, you know, the story’s always the same. The women are working, but they don’t make enough for a private insurance. And they’re working for someone who just doesn’t offer the employer insurance coverage. So.
Darcie: You’re a lifeline.
Dorothy: None of that has changed since those early days.
Darcie: How has your mission evolved in, uh, over the last 39 years?
Dorothy: You know, I think in many ways, our patient navigation program has [00:18:00] been the hallmark of The Rose. And this, these are the, the people who get patients into treatment ultimately, but they’re also every single person who’s navigating that we, we call our uninsured patients sponsored.
Because every single patient has to be sponsored by somebody, a grant, an individual, something in order to receive a service. So, you know, all of our systems are set up for that to move that sponsored woman through. And unfortunately, I don’t know many people that haven’t at some time in their life been without insurance.
And I think my staff particularly is very aware of, you know, what could happen when a woman doesn’t have that access. So we’ve evolved certainly technology wise and certainly services wise. But I think our, our basic premise that [00:19:00] we don’t want anyone to die from breast cancer because you can’t afford a mammogram has, it continues.
Darcie: Yeah. Well, I’ve met some of your team. They’re absolutely incredible. Um, and you can tell that they have such a heart for what they’re doing.
Dorothy: Thank you.
Darcie: It’s amazing. I can only imagine the hundreds, if not thousands of stories, um, in the back of your mind that you’ve collected over the last 39 years, can you share a story or two with us that have been most impactful to you?
Dorothy: I can tell you a story that actually started patient navigation.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And it was from a young woman named Jerry. Who called me from a phone booth.
Darcie: Oh my goodness.
Dorothy: And when I answered, you know, I mean, I have like maybe eight employees at this point, you know, when I answered, of course I answered calls all day [00:20:00] long, but she said, is this The Rose? And I said, yes. And she said, Oh, I’m so glad I, this was my last quarter. She’s standing in a phone booth using her quarters and she said, I was lucky there was a phone book here. And then she starts to tell me her story about how she’d found a lump in her breast. She’s 39 years old. She has a nine year old son. Her husband, uh, works, she works part time. But when she found the lump in her breast, she went to a place. And they told her you need to have a biopsy, you need to have more tests. She said, so we used all our savings we didn’t have a credit card. And when they got through their biopsy, then she had cancer. This whole time I’m thinking, she’s calling me from a phone booth. What’s the chances we’re going to get [00:21:00] disconnected?
Darcie: Yes.
Dorothy: And then I was thinking all the things that she’s told me that she somehow borrowed or found the money for, we could have helped her with.
Darcie: Yes.
Dorothy: And now she has cancer and she said, and so today my drains are still in and I went to my surgeon for a checkup and she said, he’s letting us pay it out. And then she said, and he told me I need to go talk to the “oncolologist”. And I said, you mean oncologist? She said, yeah. She never mispronounced it again.
And she said, so he took me down the hall to this oncologist and he was looking at my chart and he said, well, you’re going to need chemotherapy right away. We’ve got to start this week. And she said to him, how much is that going to cost? Because I don’t have insurance. He said, what do you mean you don’t have [00:22:00] insurance?
She said, I don’t have insurance. I’ll have to find this money somewhere. And he handed her back her chart and said, go find another doctor. I can’t help you. She took her chart, went downstairs, found a phone booth that had a phone book and started calling around. It was the American Cancer Society that said, you know, you might call The Rose.
At that point, I said, Jerry, I got to have a phone number. We don’t have a phone. I said, I’ve got to have a way to contact you just in case. And then she, she, she said, I said, didn’t you say your husband worked? He said, yeah, but he can’t take calls. And I said, well, I’ve got to have a wife. Thank God finally she gave me that. This has been a long time ago, Darcie, but I still remember what her voice sounds like.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And then I said, [00:23:00] Okay, well, let me see what I can do. Do not hang up, even if it, if I don’t come right back on, stay on this line, and I’m literally throwing a pencil across the hall to my other employee that’s administration there, saying, please get me Dr. Nancy Neff’s phone number. And she was someone that we’d worked with, someone that helped get our patients into Ben Taub. Nancy, talked to me and then made it to where she could talk to the patient, made sure that patient had that number. And she was having her, uh, she started her chemo that week. The next week was, was Thanksgiving, and they were not going to have a Thanksgiving. And my team went together and gave them a thanksgiving dinner. So, I used Jerry’s story in a grant proposal to the Episcopal Health [00:24:00] Charities, that’s what it was called then, before it became the Episcopal Health Foundation, and they are the ones who saw my vision. You know, I thought if, if you had a positive diagnosis and you had your slides with you, you know what I’m talking about.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: You know, I could just send you to Harris Health and you’d get right on in. Well, that didn’t happen. You needed someone to walk alongside you. What if Jerry had not gotten to me? What if that last quarter had been used some other way? You know? And so they helped start that program. I mean, at one time we had 500 physicians who were part of our physician network. And that was before we were part of the state program that does provide a program for uninsured if they have breast or cervical cancer. So. You know, those were the early days, but thank goodness for people like the Episcopal Charities who knew what we were up [00:25:00] against.
Darcie: Yeah. And saw, saw what you were capable of accomplishing and the impact that you could have. That’s incredible. I’m, I can imagine that that story fuels you every single day and fuels others as well. So tell us a little bit about some of the challenges or obstacles that you faced over the last 39 years.
Dorothy: Well, I think awareness has always been one of the things, you know, I, I know if, if I have the privilege, opportunity to be on television, then, uh, they, you know, of course they want to know about our uninsured program.
Well, that leaves out this whole segment of the insured population that we need so much to just have our foundation, to just have our, you know, our basic revenue just to open the doors every morning.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And uh, I think the, [00:26:00] the other thing is that for so many of our women, they’re not coming to us for screening.
Hmm. They’re coming to us with a lump in their breasts. They’re coming to us needing more than a screening. If I only did screening, Darcie, for every three insured women I serve, I could serve an uninsured. But it’s the biopsies, it’s the workouts, it’s the patient navigation to treatment. All of those things are why we have to raise this 5 million every year just to get them through.
But you know, their options are so limited when they’re coming to us at that stage. On our mobile units, which only do screening, it’s so fascinating to me because I can take the women who are diagnosed that are insured through our mobile and the ones that are uninsured and side by side, they’re the same stage.
They’ve all got that same opportunity to have the advantages of early detection. [00:27:00] Their options are the same. Their survival is the same. Not, not when we’re catching it later. The only stage four cancers we’ve diagnosed in the last eight years have been in uninsured women. The only stage four. Don’t talk to me about the need for, or the disparities that hit our healthcare system. I only have to look at that.
Darcie: Yeah. So if you had a magic wand that you could wave, what would you change?
Dorothy: Well, sure. Certainly it would be that there’d be a cure. Certainly it would be that we would not even have to get there. That whatever we could do with our bodies, we wouldn’t have cancer. Um, I mean, I can’t think of anything stronger than that. [00:28:00] After that, I think of how many people are touched by cancer, no matter what type it is. And I just think that we forget cancer changes you. And that it doesn’t, especially in breast cancer, finding it early is our only, that’s it. I mean, when we find it early, we’ve got a chance. Find it late, we don’t. Dr. Dixie Melillo always says, don’t be afraid of finding breast cancer, be afraid of finding it too late. So, you know.
Darcie: That’s wise counsel. And I, and I would imagine that’s what’s driven you to focus on better screening for young women. So talk a little bit about your passion around, um, those under 40 especially, being able to regularly get mammograms.
Dorothy: You know, we diagnose 400 to 500 women every [00:29:00] year. Half of those women are under the age of 45.
Darcie: Wow.
Dorothy: Half. Every year we diagnose women in their 20s. Last week I just interviewed someone that we diagnosed at age 18.
Darcie: Oh my goodness.
Dorothy: Now in our, in our black community, more women at age 30 to 35 develop triple negative breast cancer. And that’s one you’re not going to find easily, and you’re sure not going to cure it easily. So, you know, if I had my magic wand, as you said, I would be doing an MRI on every woman that’s in her thirties just to see what else we could find, because that’s when we could catch it. Our USPSTF, United States Preventive Services Task Force, recommends this year that that women start at the age of 40 and have one every other year. I’m seeing women die [00:30:00] way before they’re 40.
Darcie: Way before that.
Dorothy: And you know, I understand all the problems with screening. I get it. I’ve been doing this a long time. But still, if a woman can’t say, I know something’s different, and have that screening mammogram. It’s the same barrier for the insured woman, because a diagnostic mammogram is going to go against her deductible. And believe me, that’s a, that’s a big price. Who wants to go in for something that may not be nothing and, you know, and, and spend that kind of money? It’s a barrier. Anyway, we go insured or uninsured, but it’s, think about what we lose when that’s not detected. There’s just, it’s. It’s insane.
Darcie: So true. And you would hope that as the trends are getting younger, younger and younger, um, it would free [00:31:00] us to, you know, eventually, um, be able to make those recommendations younger and younger as well and get the support.
Dorothy: Darcie, you know this in healthcare?
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: It takes 10 years of gathering data and then another 10 years of studying it.
Darcie: I know.
Dorothy: Before you finally have a change. And then seven years later, somebody will come up with something that changes it again.
Darcie: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
Dorothy: The deal is we, we are women. We have certain, I truly believe this women know their bodies. They know when something isn’t right. And nobody else is going to raise their hand and say, take me when the time comes. It’s your body. You need to have a voice.
Darcie: Speak up, be your own advocate for sure.
Dorothy: That’s one message we, I hear over and over and all our podcast guests and over and over in every situation that has to do with, with anything that is healthcare related.
You must be your [00:32:00] own advocate.
Darcie: Yes. Amen. So you talked about how this wasn’t necessarily in the plan for you, that you got pushed and shoved a little bit, uh, into it. And thank goodness you did, because a million women already have been impacted by what you’ve built here. But I’m curious about the lessons you’ve learned along the way, um, growing as a leader and the CEO of this organization. What’s a key leadership lesson that you’ve learned?
Dorothy: Take care of you, people. You’re the only one who’s gonna do it. You’re gonna do the work, you’re gonna carry the mission. People don’t see me. They don’t know anything that I do but they sure know how they’re treated when they make that phone call or when they have that service, it’s, uh, that’s the number one. [00:33:00]
Darcie: Absolutely. Absolutely. You, you told us one very powerful story, uh, that I would imagine you draw on and keeps you going a lot, but what you’re doing is hard and there’s a lot of barriers and there’s a lot of things outside of your, your control. So kind of what keeps you going and driving for reaching more people, for improving all the time, kind of. What’s keeping you going?
Dorothy: You know, Darcie, it’s just the people we serve. About an hour before this podcast, one of our sponsored ladies came in. She’s gotten a job. She’s going to be able to have insurance. She’s so happy. I’m down in the lobby of her hugging and kissing. I mean, you know, you can’t buy that kind of thing. You, you, those are the feelings that get you out of bed in the morning.
Darcie: That’s right. That’s right. Absolutely. No, it’s, and it’s wonderful that you get to, to see and touch those stories every day because [00:34:00] oftentimes as a leader, you know, you get caught up in the administrative burden of the organization and you have to stay grounded.
Dorothy: Yeah, I do too. And then I go walk through the waiting room. But it is hard, Darcie. I, I think every leader needs to have someone that can talk to me. I think every leader, cause there’s no one else. You’ve got to find someone beyond your board, beyond anyone associated with your organization that you can say, wow, this was tough.
Yeah. And, and even, even if it’s just venting to know that you’re heard somewhere, that there is, there’s too many things that need fixing in our world and we get to try one little tiny part of it. But boy, for us, it’s, it’s our life. It’s our life work.
Darcie: All right. Everybody needs emotional support and everyone [00:35:00] needs safe space that they can say whatever they need to say without being guarded. Um, you know, which is, What we do every day for cancer patients, but I, I completely agree with you. It’s not, it’s not just, um, unique to someone facing a medical issue. I think it’s just life. You need that, that person, that lifeline that you can reach out to.
Dorothy: If we didn’t learn anything through COVID, that was the one thing, how much we miss each other.
Darcie: What are you most proud of?
Dorothy: Mmm. Oh, there’s a lot of things, but. I don’t ever think that way, Darcie, honestly. I always think, what else could I have done? And, and I know at the end of the day, you know, a lot of times people say, what’s going to be your legacy? I said, I’ve [00:36:00] already done it. You know, I only have to see one patient that lived to know, already done it, but, uh, I’m always proud of my employees, always proud of how they use their good judgment when we have a difficult case, and they always come through.
Darcie: So if not the legacy component, where would you like to see, it’s been 39 years, where would you like to see The Rose in the next 39 years?
Dorothy: Oh, you know, we’ve had dreams of having a Rose in every state and all those kind of things. And there, there’s been some programs that have followed our, um, patient navigation program and the, the kind of things that we do through it.
But honestly, Darcie, I kind of think this, this podcast that we started a couple of years ago, and I’m sure you feel the same, uh, and it’s called, Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. But I’m, [00:37:00] I’m sure that in some way it is reaching some of the people that I never could have hoped to reach. That’s right. Can’t provide that service, but maybe it’ll inspire someone else, or maybe it will move someone to become that advocate for a patient.
Whatever. I’m just totally amazed at this phase in my career, which obviously is in its end, getting closer to that time. But amazed that we could be doing something that could be so impactful. Thank goodness for this kind of technology. Thank goodness.
Darcie: Absolutely. Yeah. Something that we probably wouldn’t have dreamed prior to COVID, but it, you know, thrust us into, um, I think a willingness to accept and rely on technology in a way that we never had before. And with that comes reach.
Dorothy: Oh, yes. Oh yes. And I think if we as leaders, [00:38:00] whatever, we have to be, we have to understand that we’re going to take risks every single day. So take a risk that matters. I mean, you may fall flat and heavens knows when I hear my old podcast, boy, did I fall flat a lot, but you know, and, and every time you’re getting with someone, it’s a different experience, but my gosh, take a risk. Life is too short.
Darcie: Well, and look what you’re taking the risk for. It’s worth it for that. Even that one additional life that you impact that it’s worth it when you put it in that perspective.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Darcie: So CanCare and The Rose, um, have been partners for years and we’ve, um, referred clients to one another and we’ve got an emerging, even more budding partnership, but We focus on the emotional support side of the cancer journey. [00:39:00] Talk about that from your perspective. Um, just the, the million people that you’ve served, the importance of that emotional support part of the cancer care journey.
Dorothy: You know, Darcie, I’m sure you’ve seen this too. It used to be when we talk about support groups, are, you know, uh, resources like that. People were very standoffish and our women would say, I have my family, they’re my support group, you know, or I have my friends, they’re my support group. I am so grateful, not just that CanCare has also survived how many decades, during times when and any way we look at this, this is mental health, when that was kind of a stigma, if you needed something, I’m so grateful that now we’re not so afraid to say it. We need this kind of resource. And I mean it, [00:40:00] from being a caregiver to being the patient, all of those roles take a ton to get through and we all need someone there.
So I, you know, it was so interesting that before COVID, we had like six support groups that met. Some were very small, but they were different ages, you know, different needs. And after COVID, the only one that survived was our Spanish speaking one.
Darcie: Wow.
Dorothy: And I thought is, you know, I have no reason, no way of knowing what that was, but I thought it’s so interesting. I’m sure a lot of our others found networks that they could be a part of, and so glad that that’s possible. But boy have I not one on one support. There’s just, I’ve always said we need a patient navigator for every disease. We need someone who [00:41:00] knows about it, may not have been there, but at least knows what you’re going to be facing. And, and those parts of our world that we really haven’t spent a lot of time or money on, I think it’s time we do that. We’re worth it.
Darcie: I agree. I agree. So as we are wrapping up here today, and we have listeners, um, some are survivors, some have just heard those words, you have cancer. Some of our listeners are caregivers. What message would you like to leave with our listeners today?
Dorothy: You know, I always think there’s two things. One, I will, I always encourage women, men, caregivers, you have to be the advocate. There’s no one else [00:42:00] out there. If you’re caring for someone, you’re going to have to be it. And it’s a hard, That’s a hard role to play.
Darcie: Yeah.
Dorothy: I want to say to, to your listeners, you know, loving yourself is probably the most important thing you can do during this time. And if that means you’re selfish, or you don’t get up and do what you used to do, or, you know, you make somebody else do it, that’s just fine. You know, loving yourself is the most important thing you can do.
Darcie: That’s very wise words. Thank you so much for that. And thank you for the blood, sweat, and tears, um, that you’ve put in the last 39 years and the impact and the legacy. I know you don’t like to hear that word, but the legacy that you, um, will leave for so many, you know, not just in the breast cancer community, but just to show how you can get something done with some grit and [00:43:00] tenacity and a really big heart.
Dorothy: Oh, thank you, Darcie. I, you know, it’s been like the blink of an eye.
Darcie: I can only imagine. I know. What a blessing. What a blessing though. Dorothy, thank you so much. Thank you for being a part of our show today.
Dorothy: Oh, thank you.
Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hope in the Face of Cancer, a survivor by your side. If you or someone you know is facing cancer or is supporting a loved one through their journey, we invite you to share this podcast. Thank you for your support in our efforts in the cancer community. No one should face cancer alone.
Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Speke Podcasting and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose.org to learn more about our organization. Subscribe to our podcast, share episodes with friends and join the conversation on social media using #LetsTalkAboutYourBreasts. We welcome your feedback [00:44:00] and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. And remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.
