Faith, Chemo, and T-Shirts: A Survivor Who Refuses to Whisper

safiya hill

Safiya felt a lump at 36, had no insurance, and almost didn’t know where to turn. Thankfully, a referral brought her to The Rose, where our patient navigation team helped her qualify for breast cancer treatment and got her first appointment at MD Anderson scheduled in just 15 days. Through all of it, our navigators walked alongside her, and her faith, anchored by a prayer her father read her the day she was diagnosed, carried her the rest of the way.

One Woman’s Gratitude: Ginger’s Story of Survival and Service

Ginger Clark

Ginger Clark shares her personal journey battling breast cancer. Despite the challenges, she expresses gratitude and highlights the importance of early detection through regular mammograms. The episode also delves into rural healthcare issues, emphasizing the struggles small hospitals face in providing adequate services. Ginger speaks to Dorothy about healthcare access, particularly for uninsured women, and the complexity of reconstructive surgery decisions.

Community Theater, Breast Cancer, and the Louise McBee Circle of Wreaths

susan mele

Susan has been connected to The Rose since the mid-1980s, when her boss at Texas Commerce Bank handed her a stack of newspaper articles and asked her to learn everything she could about a surgeon named Dr. Dixie Melillo. That assignment turned into a decades-long relationship with The Rose, years of emceeing fundraising style shows, and an unbroken commitment to the mission that continues today. She launched the Louise McBee Circle of Life Circle of Wreaths, an annual wreath auction run entirely by Art Park Players volunteers in honor of her mother. Her message throughout the years is simple, yet profound: everyone carries a light, and even the smallest flame can be the brightest thing in someone’s darkest moment.

Attorney, CPA, Philanthropist, and Breast Cancer Survivor: Marilyn Sims

Marylin Sims

Marilyn is an attorney, CPA, and president of the Bill and Helen Crowder Foundation, the private foundation whose generosity helped build The Rose’s podcast studio. She has been a Rose patient since the late 1970s, when she came in for her very first mammogram after moving to Houston. Decades later, she found herself in a very different role, as a Stage III HER2 positive breast cancer patient. Her advice is simple and direct: check yourself between mammograms, get second opinions, take care of yourself first, and know that The Rose and organizations like it exist so that every woman, insured or not, has a path to care.

“Dying was not an Option,” a Survivor’s Story

linda petticrew

Linda Petticrew is one determined woman. She’s worked hard and many long hours to build a successful career as an Executive Assistant to some of the top CEO’s in the city. But her real strength tenacity was when she faced breast cancer, not once but twice. Diagnosed at a young age, she fought and won her battle and then twenty years later had to fight it again.

Navigating Side Effects, Fear of Recurrence, and Life After Treatment

Felicia kent

A casual night watching sports, a quick self-exam, and a lump that did not belong there. Faced with no insurance and four months of not knowing what to do, Felicia Kent walked into a neighborhood clinic, received a referral to The Rose, and heard the three words that changed everything: you have cancer. In this episode, she talks about choosing a treatment center, using research and strict adherence to medication to blunt chemo side effects, and learning to live with radiation fatigue, lymphedema, neuropathy, and a body that will never be the same. She also shares how faith, a determined daughter, an emotional support dog, and a calling to serve other survivors led her to start a nonprofit, finish her psychology degree, and focus on practical support and early mammograms in the African American community.

On the Road for Early Detection

Shelly Kot

Some women clear their calendar for a mammogram. Others step onto a 40-foot pink coach in their office parking lot. As Director of Mobile Services at The Rose, Shelly Kot oversees a pink fleet of five mobile mammography coaches that deliver the same 3D breast cancer screening you’d get in a breast health center, to women across 45 Southeast Texas counties. During this conversation, she talks about the moving parts that keep those rolling clinics on the road, the disappointment when a failed generator or quality check shuts a mobile day down, and why she still puts on a badge and does mammograms herself. She also shares how being raised by her grandparents, working inside both nonprofit and for-profit systems, and parenting a daughter shapes the way she teaches women to push for answers when something feels wrong.

Access to Treatment Takes More Than a Pathology Report

Patient Navigation

Being uninsured, speaking a different language, or not understanding a 40-page form should never decide who lives or dies. In this episode, patient navigators Laura Tovar and Elizabeth Esparza walk us through what really happens after an uninsured woman hears “you have breast cancer” at The Rose. They explain how they review applications before diagnosis, sit in the room with the radiologist, and answer the first question they always hear: “How am I going to pay for this?” They also talk about the maze behind programs like Medicaid for Breast and Cervical Cancer and Harris Health, what it takes to keep coverage from lapsing in the middle of chemo, and the extreme steps some families take, from moving counties to divorcing, just to qualify. Along the way, Laura and Elizabeth share what it costs them emotionally to carry these stories, why they sometimes cry with husbands and children, and how quilts, gas cards, summer camps, and rent assistance become part of making sure no woman has to face breast cancer or the paperwork alone.