Dorothy: [00:00:00] Let’s Talk About Your 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.
Today we have with us Dr. Dixie Melillo. The one, the only, the world famous surgeon and the co-founder of The Rose, and we’re here today to celebrate our 39th birthday. Dixie, do you realize you were 39 years old when we started this thing?
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: I mean, I was thinking I was like 36 something. Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: But 39 is a very special year.
Dr. Dixie: This is like half our life. We’ve been half our life.
Dorothy: I know. We’ve been doing this. So thank you for all that you’ve done over these last few years. You know, we actually started The Rose in October of 1985. [00:01:00] That’s when we did the doing business ask, do you remember? It cost us a whole $11.
Dr. Dixie: Woo.
Dorothy: I mean, that was big time money for us.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And then we got our nonprofit in 1986. And then we opened our center just a few months later, but it was already in 1987. So it has been a journey. Now I’m here to ask you some questions today.
Dr. Dixie: Well, I, you know, I think that what’s real important, and I don’t know if people, how, how we got going with this, you know, I mean, I was doing surgery at Bayshore in Pasadena and they kept sending me people that had lumps, breast lumps ’cause I was a woman. And they, and then I was having trouble getting anybody to take care of ’em or biopsy. No one would biopsy these people. And I think our, our real starting point, that 32-year-old. They sent me a late, a 32-year-old. Her breast was, I mean, you could see the chest wall. It was like in a big white cauliflower bleeding and Dorothy was assigned to make people like a woman surgeon at [00:02:00] that time. So, and, and she did a lot of photography. I said, Dorothy, come here. You gotta see this. You’re not gonna believe this. ’cause even at Galveston, which is the charity program of the world, back then, nothing I’d ever seen was like this. And she took a picture of it and we, we both decided we have got to, we have got to make early detection an absolute.
But see, you’d seen
Dorothy: some, some bad cancers before.
Dr. Dixie: Oh yeah. A lot of bad cases, but nothing.
Dorothy: But that was my first time.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: I, and I kept thinking. I don’t know what I’m even taking here.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: You know what? What’s happened?
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: I this as though her breast had exploded.
Dr. Dixie: I knew we didn’t even have a mammogram machine at that time. They did x-rays of the breast on something you do the the foot with, which was like 47 rads, which was.
Dorothy: It wasn’t us, it was the hospital we’re talking
Dr. Dixie: No, no, the hospital.
Dorothy: Yeah, I know.
Dr. Dixie: All the hospitals it.
Dorothy: All of them.
Dr. Dixie: It was just this hospital. They just didn didn’t do it. But I knew in Galveston we had a mammogram machine. And so Dorothy and I both decided, I said, well, I didn’t, [00:03:00] I told Dorothy we had to, and Dorothy always find some way to make it happen.
Dorothy: I, I didn’t go into that administrator’s office and say, you’ve gotta listen to me. Well, I mean, he sat in that desk and he was trembling.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, I doubt that.
Dorothy: He was.
Dr. Dixie: I doubt that.
Dorothy: But because you were on a roll, you wanted a dedicated unit. Now you gotta remember you were a general surgeon.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Now general surgeons have a real high up there in that chain of command with hospitals. ’cause you make a lot of money for ’em.
Dr. Dixie: Oh.
Dorothy: But you were not a radiologist.
Dr. Dixie: No.
Dorothy: And the radiologist said what this surgeon is wanting us to have, wanting to get her own mammogram machine? We can do ’em just fine. We know what we’re doing. Oh, oh boy did I walk around on tippy toes for a while there. You know, that was my job and I had to be nice to everyone.
But you didn’t, so you went in there and told him: we gotta have this. And you kept at it.
Dr. Dixie: Well, we did. [00:04:00] And then, you know, I think the, the.
Dorothy: Oh no. But the best part of that was when you said, and he said, well, we probably can’t even get people in here. Oh yes, we can. We can get people in here. I’ll, uh, those people, those women will just come rolling in. Well, we’re gonna have to charge a regular price. $160. Oh no, we’re not. We’re gonna have to charge less. Dr. Melillo, you’re asking me to go buy this expensive machine to build you a building to make it all happen and we’re gonna charge ’em less than everybody else. Oh, we gotta do that. That’s, that’s all.
Dr. Dixie: Remember I volunteered you to go give talks with me in the community?
Dorothy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Dixie: So that people would come in, you know.
Dorothy: I know it.
Dr. Dixie: Was days driving this slight projector and we had to even carry our screen with us. I mean, we were like a, a traveling circus.
Dorothy: We were.
Dr. Dixie: And sometimes only one or two people showed up. But by golly, we gave ’em that talk anyway.
Dorothy: You, we gave them that talk. That is right. Well, now that was in our first years though. Yeah. What other [00:05:00] milestones do you think about?
Dr. Dixie: Well, I, I think the neatest thing was, you know, when we would, we would see a cancer that we knew was a cancer we used to, could send them to the hospitals. And the hospital would do the biopsy and then take care of ’em, you know? Well that didn’t, that didn’t last long. And so as usual, I said, Dorothy, we’ve got to, we’ve got to be able to, to do the biopsies and so we gotta have an ultrasound machine, then we can show ’em it’s cancer. So somehow you got us an ultrasound machine somehow. And then I said, Dorothy, we gotta do biopsies with the ultrasound machine. And somehow you got us that. And then I said, but, but, but some cancers don’t show up on ultrasound. We, we gotta have a stereotactic machine.
Dorothy: Oh, every one of those made it made a difference.
Dr. Dixie: This woman, this woman had no, no. All I did was want and, and say we have to, you know.
Dorothy: It’s too bad you wanted so much.
Dr. Dixie: But you always made [00:06:00] it happen.
Dorothy: Ah, Dixie. Dixie.
Dr. Dixie: No. And I tell you what though, honestly. I accredit everything. I mean, God had his, God had his hand on this whole deal.
Dorothy: I know it.
Dr. Dixie: You know.
Dorothy: I know it.
Dr. Dixie: It’s, it’s, uh.
Dorothy: But you sure fought it back in the beginning.
Dr. Dixie: Well, you know, I.
Dorothy: You know, you had your own way of doing things.
Dr. Dixie: Well, perhaps.
Dorothy: And you were gonna do other kind of surgeries. You weren’t gonna just do breast, but then you finally said you’d just do breast.
Dr. Dixie: ‘Cause the need was so great.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: And they were doing it wrong.
Dorothy: Well, of course they were.
Dr. Dixie: They were whacking off the whole breast.
Dorothy: And that’s, that’s what Dixie always was known for. Lemme tell you how to do this.
Dr. Dixie: Well, they were taking so many lymph nodes, these people were running around with arms as big as a a bucket. And I knew that didn’t have to do that. You know, no, the sentinel node. Oh, what’s a sentinel node? Well, it’s to keep you from your arm, right, being your a sling. And they used to whack the breast down to the right, to the muscles and, and these women suffered. I mean, do you remember that one [00:07:00] lady we had that we did a i, I did a, a cassette tape with her and how she had gone in for a hysterectomy and her gynecologist said, oh, by the way, we’ll just take that lump outta your breast while you’re in there. When she woke up with a radical mastectomy. I mean, can you envision in all your life the shock?
Dorothy: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, it’s bad enough to have a radical mastectomy if you know you’re going to have it right, but not to even. Consider it. And I took care of her and her daughters for years and years and years later. I know, and.
Dorothy: But do you remember you asked her, how are you really doing? And that’s when she told that’s.
Dr. Dixie: She did.
Dorothy: This story. Oh gosh.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Gosh.
Dr. Dixie: She just broke and she finally ended up, she lost her mind. She ended up in a nursing home. Her daughter said, because, and she said her husband left her because she looked so horrible and the girl said, no, she just wouldn’t let anybody see her.
She drove everybody away from her because she just hated the way she looked, you know? And that, that sent me on another mission. This, this [00:08:00] is wrong. We, we can’t do this to women.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: You know, if nothing else, they absolutely, positively have to know what they’re gonna have before they have it.
Dorothy: Absolutely.
Dr. Dixie: And there’s mastectomy has a, a fine role. I’m not, you know, against mastectomy. It’s just that the woman needs to choose it and know it’s gonna happen.
Dorothy: And Dixie, you are a big, big part of all the changes that happened in the breast cancer rule. And I know you don’t think you were, but you were because soon people were looking to you to say what the next step was to. You know, you always stayed up on things. You always went to the, the conferences and all of that. You were really.
Dr. Dixie: But a lot of times they didn’t listen to me. If you remember.
Dorothy: Well, I know, but you, you decided to do it your way. Now. Now we talked about equipment that’s changed , we talked about procedures that have changed. Thank you. God. What are you glad has not changed here at The Rose?
Dr. Dixie: Compassion and love and caring. That’s, if we ever lose that we’re gone.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You know, and they, yeah. [00:09:00] You know, most of the charity paces, places, they do good work. They, they do adequate work, but nobody, nobody holds their hand or hugs ’em or you know.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: And when I tell my girls upstairs, I said, oh my God, we got this young girl. We gotta get her in. They move heaven and earth. I know. They stay late. They, you know? That’s something that I hope never changes.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: Never. If we lose that, we lost everything.
Dorothy: I remember one time we were talking about, we had a very small staff then, and, and y’all have to remember this, back in the eighties, early nineties, and, and, and I was complaining that we couldn’t, you that we were, couldn’t find whatever staff person, maybe a tech or whatever. And you said, well, my gosh, I don’t know why. ’cause we pay him so much. I said, Dixie, how much do you think we pay people? And she goes, well, well I thought everybody made at least $20 an hour. Now that should, that would be a hundred [00:10:00] dollars now an hour. And I was going, not quite Dixie, and, and, but you know, it was that kind of thing. They stayed even when we weren’t the best payers and we weren’t, you know, all of those things, they stayed because they cared.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And I think the people that came to us from the beginning to the ones that come to us right now. There’s a different kind of caring that goes on.
Dr. Dixie: Absolutely. And let me just tell you, the people that are here now, we pay as good as anybody, but we work 10 times harder.
Dorothy: We do.
Dr. Dixie: We see so many more patients. My gosh. You know, most of these folks, including our precious doctors, they could go someplace else, make the same amount of money, and not have to work near as hard as they do.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: So I mean, the good thing about working with people that you know, they’re there because they care. Not because they’re not in it for the money. You know, these are people who wanna work, who care about human beings.
Dorothy: I know it’s, yeah. I mean, it, it is. You can see it. And that’s the number one [00:11:00] response we get on our surveys.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And when people send us compliments or they, they always talk about, it really felt like a caring, caring place. And I think, I think not being in that purely clinical setting helps. Yeah. So I have some questions here that some of the staff.
Dr. Dixie: Well you go right ahead.
Dorothy: Staff have pulled together for us. Uh.
Dr. Dixie: If I don’t have an answer, I’ll make it up.
Dorothy: Dixie, could you stay focused here for.
Dr. Dixie: Yes ma’am.
Dorothy: Just a few minutes.
Dr. Dixie: Yes, ma’am.
Dorothy: Well, let me see. This one. We’re, we’re want to know some of the obstacles that, that were in our way when we were trying to get The Rose going.
Dr. Dixie: Money.
Dorothy: And some of the… money!
Dr. Dixie: Money, money.
Dorothy: Money. Money. Okay. We got that covered. And then what are some of our miracles?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, Ron smith. I mean, God always puts the right people at the right place when we needed them. And how many times did we sit there and say, oh, I guess this is it. I mean, uh, and then, I dunno. I’m glad you’re admitting that. Oh [00:12:00] yeah.
No, no, no. Because, well, she always said that. I said, no, God’s gonna send to somebody.
Dorothy: And I’d say, I wish God would tell me today. Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: We get with the program and then like the anonymous donor, the.
Dorothy: Oh yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You know, I mean, every time we have thought, okay, well we did good. I mean, we tried, we, we did as best we could. And you know, if it goes under, that’s okay, we still try and then boom, some miracle would happen, you know?
Dorothy: Oh it did. I mean, over and over again.
Dr. Dixie: It’s just. Ah.
Dorothy: You know the time when I thought The Rose might not survive and you won’t even remember this was when, was when you got kind of down, I don’t know if you can, I’m, I see you sitting in your office and you said, I don’t think I wanna do this much anymore. I can’t tell another person, another young woman, she has breast cancer. And, and Dixie was, this is why I knew it wasn’t us, but it [00:13:00] was it, it had to be us because things started to go badly. You know? It was like you had pulled your energy away ’cause you were in such grief and something else happened. Someone talked to you or something and you said, okay, if that’s what I gotta do. But that’s when you really decided, I will never forget feeling like, oh my gosh, our dream is going away. Because it took both of us.
Dr. Dixie: Absolutely.
Dorothy: I don’t care what you say.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, absolutely.
Dorothy: But, but boy, that was, when I think of all the women you’ve had to tell them they were diagnosed with breast cancer, you know? Gosh.
Dr. Dixie: Well, I, and I tell you, the thing that’s like a knife in the heart though, is if you tell somebody they got breast cancer, but you can’t get him any help.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: You know, that’s.
Dorothy: And those early days, you’re right, we had, we had the hospitals that would.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: And then they didn’t take them.
Dr. Dixie: That was probably when they started pulling back and, yeah.
Dorothy: Then, then we had to show ’em that the people actually did [00:14:00] have cancer.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. We had to do our own biopsies and have them give ’em a path report. And for a while that worked.
Dorothy: It worked.
Dr. Dixie: But now it’s really getting tough again.
Dorothy: It is, and, and you know, when I think about the times that you went to Congress. The times I went to the Texas legislature, uh, just to get some of these bills that help us now. And they’re all involved in Medicaid. We gotta remember that Medicaid has a place in this world.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah!
Dorothy: And it definitely does for us. Half of the 400 women are 500 women that we diagnose every year are uninsured. And we count on that program, that breast and cervical cancer program to help get these people in. And it’s Medicaid anyway that you look at it. So let’s hope that’s one of the programs that is able to survive what’s going on.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, absolutely. Uh, you know. I honestly think even in our diagnosis and and treatment, I think [00:15:00] this would be a good model. I mean, what, what this times have shown us is that you really can’t depend on the government. Because at a whim, they can just drag, pull the rug out from under you. I think The Rose is a good model for now we don’t have the treatment, but for the diagnosis, we have the community support. We have the people that you know, really wanna do what they’re doing.
I mean, this would be a good model for like diabetes. Alzheimer’s. You know, St. Jude’s for children’s cancer. I mean, they take care of people. You don’t have to have a wallet biopsy before you go to St. Jude’s.
Dorothy: That’s true.
Dr. Dixie: You shouldn’t have to have a wallet biopsy before.
Dorothy: And you talked about that for a long time. Having it.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, it is so crazy. You are sitting here with a monster on your chest and you could absolutely be cured and live for a long, long time if somebody would help you get that thing off your chest. ’cause there’s no way you can cut it off yourself. Can you imagine what a, what a desperate awful, agonizing feeling that.
Dorothy: [00:16:00] No, you can’t get away from it if it’s on your chest. Like I said.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, and other cancers are the, you know, you’re, you’re afraid of other cancers, but this one is stirring you in the face. You know, this one is, you can touch it, you know, it’s there, you know, it’s different. You see it progress, you see it eat through the skin and bleed. And I know, and you could have been cured had you had money.
Dorothy: It’s always a matter of money.
Dr. Dixie: Making cancer history. If you have a lot of money in insurance.
Dorothy: Well, Dixie, that’s the, that is the way of our world right now.
Dr. Dixie: Well, we need to change it.
Dorothy: Okay, so how are you gonna change it?
Dr. Dixie: We’re gonna build a St. Jude for breast cancer.
Dorothy: Ok. And you know, I’m retiring in six months, so you better get this done fast.
Dr. Dixie: You’ll still be around it though.
Dorothy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You’ll gimme guidance.
Dorothy: So, so what’s something we always disagreed on?
Dr. Dixie: That we disagreed on?
Dorothy: [00:17:00] You always wanted a hospital. I always said we needed a rose in every hospital.
Dr. Dixie: Well, that’s true though. Both of that’s true.
Dorothy: Dixie, this has been our, our number one disagreement for our entire relationship.
Dr. Dixie: No, I knew you’d come around. No.
Dorothy: Lord, help me.
Dr. Dixie: Well, it wasn’t the right time.
Dorothy: All right, wait, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go back to our, our questions here.
Dr. Dixie: Okay.
Dorothy: Um, what story about a donor or a volunteer still moves you to today?
Dr. Dixie: There’s so many. I mean, we have had people give us money that, you know, they didn’t even have the money. You know, I, I have my patients who are so poor, I mean, they’ll give us a little $10, you know, or something that when they come to help, I mean, we have been so blessed. I mean, the Shrimp Boil, it’s [00:18:00] like a miracle when so many people turn out for they Shrimp Boil. I mean, it’s not like. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s neat and it’s fun. You know, but it’s not like a extravaganza that that these people turn out like you were giving away.
Dorothy: People bring things for the silent auction.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah!
Dorothy: And then they bid on ’em.
Dr. Dixie: And then they buy ’em.
Dorothy: I’m going, you already bought it once why would you buy it again? I know.
Dr. Dixie: And again and again, and, and, To me that is just a miracle the way the community has supported us.
Dorothy: Right. Besides Marian’s story, Jump For The Rose. Now that has always been.
Dr. Dixie: Favorite patient story.
Dorothy: Favorite. Yes. Because, you know, she promised you that, that she wouldn’t pay you.
Dr. Dixie: She came to us, she had got divorced, she had no insurance, and she had a, you know, cancer. And so. I mean, because I had seen so many, sometimes you get where, okay. You know, so I biopsied her and she had cancer and, and she says, what am I [00:19:00] gonna do? What am I, well, back then I was doing surgery. So I said, I’m gonna do the surgery. She said, how can you do that? I said, well, that’s what we’re here for. You know, we, we started this place so that we could take care of folks like you. That really, I mean, it was a small, early cancer, it was curable. And so I did surgery on her, and, uh, she said, well, I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna repay you. I’m gonna repay you and, and when I get well, and I said, yeah, well, if you win the lottery, uh, don’t forget us. What a terrible thing to say.
Dorothy: Well, you said it.
Dr. Dixie: And she’s repaid us a thousand times over.
Dorothy: A thousand times over.
Dr. Dixie: I think she has the jump for The Rose. And they raised.
Dorothy: It’s a skydiving event.
Dr. Dixie: Skydiving, you know.
Dorothy: And people jump out perfectly good airplanes.
Dr. Dixie: You did.
Dorothy: Say. Yep. Yep. Best experience of life.
Dr. Dixie: I sent my husband then ’cause I wasn’t gonna.
Dorothy: But it has, it’s raised just under $400,000 in the years it’s been around. My gosh.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, so I’m very respectful to anybody who says they’re gonna pay me back now because [00:20:00] she never lets me forget it. We laugh about it every time we get together.
Dorothy: Do you remember the story about, uh, the little man in El Paso? We had one of our portable units coming in the mo, the mobile units that used to carry the, the portable machines around. And so he is coming from Arizona, bringing the, the, uh, sprinter vehicle that has The Rose on the side of it. And he pulled into a gas station, got his gas, and this man pulled up right next to him in this beat up old truck, and he was holding this dollar bill out the window. He said, for The Rose, for The Rose! And the, and the man said, you know, he didn’t speak much Spanish and the guy sure didn’t speak much English. And he was going, I’m not The Rose, you know? No. And he’s pointing to the sign and he’s saying, help my mother. For The Rose. For The Rose. Oh my gosh. That. Guy [00:21:00] put the dollar on his dashboard. And just all the way from Apostle to Houston thought, how did that happen? You know, for him it was a small miracle. To have met someone that carried that much a dollar.
Dr. Dixie: There’s so little love and compassion in this world right now, you know?
Dorothy: That’s not true. There’s a lot of love and compassion here.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. But it’s not being shown much nowadays, so that’s why we gotta keep it alive.
Dorothy: Well, I agree with you once on that. All right, let’s look at some of our other questions here.
Dr. Dixie: Okay.
Dorothy: Look at yours. Which one did you think was a great one?
Dr. Dixie: Which one did I think was a great one? Let’s see. Oh, where we’re going.
Dorothy: Okay.
Dr. Dixie: Now. And you know me, I always, I, I’ve been yelling about this for 20 years, and again, nobody listened, but that was okay. They didn’t listen to me about the estrogen either, you know? [00:22:00] I tell you what, we’re seeing a new mean cancer. It is not dependent on estrogen or progesterone or anything, and it’s aggressive and it goes fast, and it gets young people. Now. Everybody makes cancer cells. I mean, that’s just the norm. When, when the mitochondria dies in the, in the, in a normal cell, this cell reverts back to its primitive nature and it eats sugar and divides it sugar, and it just ferments sugar. We’ve known that since 1934. Auto Warberg won a Nobel Prize for it. I mean, come on. It’s not, you know, rocket science. Nobody has bothered to tell us to quit sucking down so much sugar because there’s no money to be made if you stay healthy and you know, we could have prevented so much cancer, but the problem is if [00:23:00] people stay healthy, then the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t make money and the food industry loses money and then the doctors lose money in the hot. Oh my God. If people stay healthy, it’s a disaster. So nobody is going to tell you, okay? And I mean, I could see the handwriting on the wall when we started, you know, with the processed foods back in the 1990s. Added sugar. Added sugar. Added sugar. Because sugar is eight times more addictive than heroin. If they add sugar, you’re gonna want more.
Dorothy: You’re gonna buy more.
Dr. Dixie: And do you know who owns all the big food industries? RJ Reynolds, Philip Morris, they bought all these food and food manufacturers up. And they have CAT scans that they have set up to, to see which sugar lights your brain or which food makes you more addicted. ‘Cause it hits the opioid center. And then they, they push that and they, you know.
Dorothy: All right, so what is. [00:24:00] What are you The Rose gonna do?
Dr. Dixie: We are going to… in my St. Jude’s, I’m gonna have a whole section for prevention.
Dorothy: Okay.
Dr. Dixie: I am gonna teach nutrition prevention and, uh, the cancer treatments work so much better if you cut the sugar. I mean, think about a PET scan for god’s sakes. How long have we been doing pet scans.
Dorothy: Ages.
Dr. Dixie: Do you know what they inject you with for a PET scan?
Dorothy: So it’ll light up?
Dr. Dixie: Radioactive sugar.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Come on, gang. And then the oncologist will sit there and give you a can of ensure while they’re trying to give you chemotherapy. I can’t process it. I can’t process why? Well, yeah, I can. I mean, it’s always about the money. You know that? I guess maybe that’s why I don’t like the money so much, except when they give it to The Rose. But you know what I’m saying? Our, our, um our industries have so deteriorated to where, [00:25:00] I mean now, I mean about 70 to 80% of Alzheimer’s dementia, of which we have an epidemic and we have no medicines that really are effective could be prevented. It’s insulin resistance of the brain. It is from having too much sugar. Your insulin doesn’t work, your brain shuts down. They’ve done studies with with keto diets with now these people have to be locked up because if there’s sugar, they’re going to get it. ’cause the brain is telling, I gotta have sugar. I gotta have sugar. Well, you know, they put ’em on a keto diet that are in Dale Bresnick did this, and their brains start to light up in brain scans.
Dorothy: Wow.
Dr. Dixie: Why is this not being shouted from the rooftops? Money.
Dorothy: Money.
Dr. Dixie: But you know me, money doesn’t impress me.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: So I’m shouting from the rooftops.
Dorothy: Good.
Dr. Dixie: Cut it up.
Dorothy: Good.
Dr. Dixie: No, but that’s gonna be a big section is prevention, [00:26:00] you know, and, and, uh, my hospital’s gonna teach prevention. It’s gonna get out there and show prevention. We’re gonna.
Dorothy: Will you research?
Dr. Dixie: Absolutely.
Dorothy: I mean, we have research.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, absolutely. We’ll have the brightest minds and the most wonderful people in the world at this hospital. You won’t have to have a wallet biopsy to get in. You know, I mean, it is so heartbreaking here. I like yesterday, I had this girl enormous, her breasts, no, normally cancer doesn’t hurt. Okay? But she had so many lymph nodes positive that the fluid had backed up to where her breast was as big as a basketball and it hurt. And she couldn’t get anybody to help her. And for six months they’d been giving her antibiotics. Hello?
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Dixie: Because she was only 37, they just didn’t think…
Dorothy: A young woman can have breast cancer. Right? Nope.
Dr. Dixie: Hey.
Dorothy: How many have [00:27:00] we seen?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, and we’re seeing more and more and more and more. I know I’ve said that forever, but we are seeing younger people. I mean, look at her numbers.
Dorothy: No, our numbers, they show it. Of course. It hasn’t been shown nationally except in the colon cancer area.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, it’s.
Dorothy: But it’s going to be.
Dr. Dixie: It will be.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Trust me. Yeah. All of this stuff.
Dorothy: Alright, Dixie, so you’re gonna have your own hospital major prevention.
Dr. Dixie: Yes.
Dorothy: Focus. What else?
Dr. Dixie: I don’t know.
Dorothy: Let me tell you something else.
Dr. Dixie: What else?
Dorothy: I’ll, I’ll tell you something that.
Dr. Dixie: Okay. Tell me something else.
Dorothy: That I always regretted we didn’t have the funds or the shared partners or whatever it to…
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Was that we really never had, but that one time a way to offer mind, body, spirit.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, so important.
Dorothy: I, I just, that was so important and, and I know for you and me, that spiritual side has been a biggie for a long, long time.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Dorothy: And we [00:28:00] know every word you say your body hears. We, we know the things that that can happen, but we as The Rose, were never really able to crack that nut.
Dr. Dixie: That’s gonna be, no, that’s a very, gonna be a very important thing in the hospital too, because, uh, a neurophysicist who taught in medical school, Bruce Lipton.
Dorothy: Oh yeah.
Dr. Dixie: He wrote a book called The Biology of Belief. The man was an atheist and he set to prove about that there’s no God, you know, that the body works on its own. What he proved was there’s a God.
Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: And that your thoughts and your belief changed the chemistry of your body where you will even heal better. Not get cancer so much. Your everything will work better, you know? And. I mean, I learned long ago.
Dorothy: And you know, beliefs are just thoughts. You keep thinking.
Dr. Dixie: Yes, but they, they secrete chemicals in your brain.
Dorothy: I know, I know. But I’m saying if you [00:29:00] ever get to the point where you understand that.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Then you change your thoughts.
Dr. Dixie: Oh. You can change your thoughts, change your life.
Dorothy: And then your beliefs will be different. I mean, it’s, but it, and I know right now there’s worldwide prayers and meditations going on to heal, to move our world to peace. And you know, and the other part of it is being sure what’s around you? Toxic people hurt. Toxic news hurts. All of those things your body has to ma’am to deal with it in a different way. So, you know, those were the things I think that, uh, I wish we we could have done. And the other thing I wish we could have done is to have had our own school. You know, we had those seminars for so long. For techs or for people wanting to be a technologist.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Or having some way that we could have really [00:30:00] paid for our employees to go back to college, to go, to get other skills. It’s not just being a technologist. I mean, everything that we do here is very skilled and you know, the more education you have.
Dr. Dixie: Well, yeah. And, and that’s why I love the tumor conferences so much because everybody got to see what it looks like on a mammogram, what it looks like on an ultrasound. And I do, I take medical photographs of something of these, some of these bad cancers, and it’s not on a cell phone, it’s on a regular camera and I printed up and put it in their charts. You know, it’s not something I’m gonna put on the internet.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: But, um, I mean, if. Then we present. That’s gonna be real important, my tumor conference. ’cause I am gonna present these, I do what everybody laughs at. They call it a boob sheet. But I take notes about all the stressors that’s going on in these people’s lives, you know?
And to present these people [00:31:00] as humans. They’re not just number so and so, PID, so and so. But this is a woman who’s battling, you know, whose husband left her, who’s a, you know. And I want the people at work here. ’cause I think it would be so much more encouraging and they’d understand why sometimes people are mean because they’re scared, you know?
Dorothy: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Dr. Dixie: But if they would see this as a human and then they see the presentation, we get some weird stuff.
Dorothy: We do. I mean, every radiologist that’s ever worked for us said, I’ve never seen this kind of pathology.
Dr. Dixie: Never seen this stuff. But you know, where else do they go? They come in.
Dorothy: So anything else you wish we could have done that you intend to do now?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, you know, I am really satisfied with what we’ve done. I really, really, I, I think it’s been a miracle. It has, you know, I mean, I, I, uh. Sometimes I wake [00:32:00] up and I can’t believe that, you know, and everybody says, why don’t you take vacation? And I go, what’s that? You know, I.
Dorothy: No, I believe in vacation.
Dr. Dixie: The only, the only time I’ve had day days off in the last year since the pandemic is when I got my cataracts fixed. I, I would rather be here than any place in the world. I love these people. I know, you know. I’ve been everywhere. I don’t need to see nothing. I don’t need no stinking vacation. That’s.
Dorothy: I need vacations. Just well to…
Dr. Dixie: Well you do.
Dorothy: No.
Dr. Dixie: That’s good.
Dorothy: …stop…
Dr. Dixie: that’s good.
Dorothy: …for a little bit. But I don’t need to go anywhere.
Dr. Dixie: But these people energize me. They, yeah, they keep me going, you know?
Dorothy: I know. Alright, Dixie, we’re celebrating 39 years.
Dr. Dixie: Yes we are. And it’s been a wonderful 39.
Dorothy: It has.
Dr. Dixie: And the next 30 nine’s gonna be just as good.
Dorothy: Alright. I believe you. Not all the time, but I believe you on that one. Thank you so
much for being with us. Oh, listen.
Dr. Dixie: You know, I think the most important thing is always remember that [00:33:00] you didn’t get here by yourself. It’s the hand of God, you know? And yes, God does miracles. In fact, I just had a patient that I diagnosed her a year ago, and you know, I, I’m a woman of faith. I believe God heals well. She didn’t do nothing about it. For a whole year. Well, now she’s in deep dodo, you know, I mean, she’s in trouble.
Dorothy: Mm.
Dr. Dixie: And she says, well, I thought God was gonna heal me. Well, sometimes God sends you a surgeon and a, and a radiologist and just sometimes God works through people.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: You know, I, I wanna be the whole in the flute that the Holy Spirit blows through. I wanna be, you know, when I look back at my life and every, everybody laughs at me, but. I’m such a little old, simple country girl. You know? I mean, the things that have happened to me can only be the hand of God. I mean, my dad has a high school education. My mom dropped out in the eighth [00:34:00] grade. I got pregnant when I was 16, kicked outta high school, and God thinks it’s funny to take a person like that and make a doctor out of them. You know, that’s the hand of God. Who, how, how would I get to there from here if he didn’t?
Dorothy: Well, I didn’t agree with some of that, but Dixie, you had your own way and you had your own, you had your own motivation.
Dr. Dixie: He motivated me.
Dorothy: Uh, I think the love of other people motivated you.
Dr. Dixie: Well, but God is love.
Dorothy: I know. I’m not arguing that.
Dr. Dixie: I, but I mean it, when I look back, I, I just say. I’m not. And then they name a school after you. Oh my gosh. That to me, every time I go to that school, it’s like, what were they thinking? You know? And that’s a miracle, you know? I mean, all of the things that now, most of the awards that I’ve gotten were set up by you.
Dorothy: You worked.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Just that first one.
Dr. Dixie: You put my name in for this and that and the other, you know? And I appreciate that. Oh [00:35:00] man. Right. Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, good grief, you know?
Dorothy: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Melillo Dixie, who is that? But, you know, but that also is the hand of God, because it gives me the credibility that people will listen to what he wants done.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: So, I, I, I just, I’m always grateful. I’m so grateful but he likes me. I’m a big sign in my office, says Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.
Dorothy: Oh!
Dr. Dixie: But no, we, we are so blessed. We are just incredibly, and that’s why I told my last breath, I am going to try to help these people.
Dorothy: I understand.
Dr. Dixie: You know, I mean, to retire, you gotta be tired before you retire.
Dorothy: I don’t agree with that.
Dr. Dixie: I’m not tired. So I can’t leave.
Dorothy: I’m not tired either. No, Dixie.
Dr. Dixie: You’ll be, you’ll be in there helping me. I know you will be.
Dorothy: You know, now the main thing I’m looking forward to Is being able to say [00:36:00] what I wanna say without worrying it’s gonna hurt The Rose.
Dr. Dixie: Oh yeah.
Dorothy: Because I have some very strong opinions about women, women’s health, how it has to be done better. And I can’t do those things when I’m CEO of The Rose.
Dr. Dixie: Oh. I just go ahead and do ’em anyway.
Dorothy: Well, you’re not CEO of The Rose. I keep trying to tell you this. Alright, Dixie, we’re gonna.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Okay. We’re gonna wind this.
Dr. Dixie: Okay.
Dorothy: This podcast up.
Dr. Dixie: Here we go.
Dorothy: And thank you again for being with us and for being such a legend, you know, you’re, you’ve left an incredible legacy, but there will never be another Dixie Melillo.
Dr. Dixie: Lord. Thank you. There’ll never be another Dorothy Weston.
Dorothy: Well, I don’t know. They’ll find them.
Dr. Dixie: I gotta keep up with your names.
Dorothy: All right, dear.
Dr. Dixie: Alright. Well, I love you.
Dorothy: I love you.
Dr. Dixie: And I know you’ll be, you’ll have your hand right in there helping me. When you want. [00:37:00] When I want, if you want.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. But I’m, I’m gonna keep at it till, till the end.
Dorothy: Good.
Dr. Dixie: Till He calls me home.
Dorothy: Good.
Dr. Dixie: And I, I mean, I’m ready anytime. Beam me up, Scotty. ’cause this place is crazy. But he keeps making me stay here.
Dorothy: I know.
Dr. Dixie: He keeps me perfectly healthy so I can, he can work me to death. I mean, I see the plan. So I’ll be here.
Dorothy: I know. Alright.
Dr. Dixie: Alright.
Dorothy: We’ll wind up this podcast. Thank everyone for listening and happy birthday to The Rose.
Dr. Dixie: Happy birthday Rose.
Post-Credits: 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 and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can [00:38:00] make the difference to a person in need. And remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.
