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.
I’m talking to Dr. Dixie Melillo today and trying to get her to use the microphone in the way you’re supposed to be using it. So I’m gonna apologize to our listeners going in if we have some in and outs because she gets so excited, she just starts moving all over the place.
Dr. Dixie: Well, this thing makes me cross-eyed. It’s so close.
Dorothy: Well look at me then.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, okay.
Dorothy: Alright. We were talking about your favorite patient.
Dr. Dixie: Well, I tell you what, when, when.
Dorothy: They’re not favorite, but someone who’s a hero.
Dr. Dixie: I see a lot of of bad patients, and then they ask me, do you have, do I have a chance? Is there any way I can [00:01:00] beat this?
Dorothy: You see a lot of patients that are and very advanced.
Dr. Dixie: They’re very advanced stages, and, uh, I said, yes. I said, only God decides when you’re outta here. I said, I have a lady. And I still see her. I have a lady in 2010 and I have pictures. Okay. Her cancer was so large, it was coming out the side of her chest. I mean, it was as big as almost a football. She had let it go because she had had a lot of unhappiness in her life. And I mean, she knew it was there, but she just didn’t, she didn’t wanna deal with it. She was having all sorts of home problems. Well, finally it got to where it’s, and these things smell really bad. I mean, you can walk in a room with somebody with this and with their clothes on and it’s dead flesh. You know it, it’s rotting flesh.
So she came to me and we had a come to Jesus talk and I said, now you. The thing is, you gotta decide you wanna live. If you don’t wanna live, there’s nothing anybody can do to make you. I said, but if [00:02:00] you really have, you’ve turned it around. ’cause she found out really, she wasn’t hurting her husband, she wasn’t hurting her kids.
They didn’t care. That’s how she got in that place. I said, now if you don’t care about you, it won’t work. I said, but if you care about you and you wanna fight. We will do it. So, I mean, she had, she went through everything you can imagine, mastectomy, chemo, radiation. She is cancer free. Now, 15 years later, she comes to see me about every six months and they keep telling me, you don’t have to go see Dr. Melillo. She says, oh, you don’t understand. It makes her happy. No, that’s the truth. And I, I tell her, you know, I said, as long as you come back and I see you and you’re doing good. I can honestly tell these patients, there’s always hope.
Dorothy: Right. There’s always hope. Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: And I, and I’ve seen miracles many times. I mean, even some of the people that used to volunteer for us, we thought they would never make it and they did fine. You know?
Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: But [00:03:00] you know, you ain’t outta here till God says it’s over. So.
Dorothy: That is so true.
Dr. Dixie: If you wanna fight, the body has miraculous healing ability now. It, it’s gotta have help in that kind of a situation. But. Oh, I, you know, so many times I’ve seen things, people I never thought would make it, made it.
Dorothy: So let’s go to the next question here.
Dr. Dixie: Okay.
Dorothy: The hardest conversation you ever had with a patient.
Dr. Dixie: The hardest conversations were when I tell people they have cancer and I don’t have anything, no place to send them and nothing I can do for ’em.
Dorothy: Wow.
Dr. Dixie: Or they have to go through the clinic system for six months before they can get charity care. That’s the craziest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life.
Dorothy: And it is a, it is a real issue with us right now. We’re, we spent the last year trying to find some other alternatives, anyone else that would help us with these patients. So many times our ladies don’t qualify for breast and cervical cancer program because they make too much money. Now you have to [00:04:00] remember, 200% of poverty is almost nothing. But you could make, if you make $25 over and it’s a household income, or if you have a teenager that’s working. You know, at some fast food place, hey, that money counts too. And you could easily get over that limit. So this is, this is our biggest challenge right now. Finding treatment for people who are working two and three jobs. You make too much money.
Dr. Dixie: And if you don’t live in Harris County, and you can’t, you don’t qualify for Medicaid. What?
Dorothy: Yeah, there isn’t anything else.
Dr. Dixie: What? It’s insane. You can’t, it’s, you just can’t do that. Uh, humans that way, you know?
Dorothy: It feels like we’ve gone back in time.
Dr. Dixie: Oh yeah. I, I, you know, I feel kinda like I did back there in the 1980s when we’re sitting there, what are we gonna do?
Dorothy: And, and then Dr. Hock would show up or somebody else would show up, or we’d get another doctor to help us with a surgery or whatever. But that [00:05:00] time is long gone. There has to be a better way.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. I don’t know.
Dorothy: So talk about being a woman in this job.
Dr. Dixie: Well, I think, I think it’s very important, you know, that we’re women or that, that we are women.
Dorothy: Okay.
Dr. Dixie: The male doctors are, they’re very kind and caring. But, you know, I hug my patients. I, I mean, and I hug my patients. I kiss my patients, I, they, they clinging to me like little children, crying. You know, I just, I, I don’t. I don’t think a man would be as comfortable doing that.
Dorothy: Well, there’s a lot of reasons why they wouldn’t.
Dr. Dixie: Well, oh, I know why.
Dorothy: It has, has nothing to do with being.
Dr. Dixie: Don’t touch me. Me. Don’t look at me. I know compassion. But, um, but no, I mean, sometimes people just need to be held, you know? And I do that. I mean, the minute they, they reach out for me, I hold them.
Dorothy: But do you think our almost all female environment has made a difference in how The Rose has grown?
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. [00:06:00] Yeah, I think so because, uh, it’s just a fact. Women are more compassionate.
Dorothy: I think we work harder.
Dr. Dixie: Yes. Right now.
Dorothy: And we’re not saying it ’cause we love all the men in our life. We love every donor, every volunteer, our husbands, our kids. So it’s not any of that.
Dr. Dixie: No. No.
Dorothy: It’s just that.
Dr. Dixie: Well, I think we’re more passionate about what we’re doing, which makes you work harder. I think across the board, if women don’t really like what they’re doing, they don’t work harder, you know?
Dorothy: Yeah. That’s true.
Dr. Dixie: They can be very, uh, unworking.
Dorothy: Yes, that’s true. That’s true. But I, I think it’s just a different perspective. I, I think the other thing that has been with both of us is that we’ve been poor and that we, we know what it’s like.
Dr. Dixie: Yes.
Dorothy: To not even expect anything.
Dr. Dixie: Yes.
Dorothy: You know, to, to then go around others that, that have [00:07:00] things you never even thought about having or are treated differently.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. You know, well, I think my greatest eyeopener was at the time, it seemed like an absolute disaster, but it set me up for what I’m doing. Um, when, when I got pregnant and, um, my husband and I, my, my mother, uh, went to his commanding officer and decided we would get married. And, uh, so we got, so we got married, and then when we moved back to the states where his folks were in Connecticut, I mean, I, I never went to the doctor. I couldn’t afford prenatal care. I didn’t take any prenatal vitamins. I didn’t see anybody. And you know, his mother had 10 kids and when she got, when labor started, she got on the trolley and went down to the Yale New Haven Charity Hospital to have her children, and then they called Papa to come and get her when, when she was ready to be discharged.
I mean, this was a very hardy group, you know, [00:08:00] and when, when, you know, we went to this hospital, when I, uh, funny story though. My husband was sitting down having a beer at the corner bar, and, uh, I walked down there. I was in so much pain with my labor pains. I walked down there and I was big as an elephant, and I said, I think I need to go to the hospital. I’m having a lot of pain. And he said, oh, sit down. Have a beer and some peanuts, you know, and I said, I, I, I really think I oughta go. Well, my water broke right there on the bar room floor. Then he believed I had to go. He said, okay, alright, if you’re gonna make a miss, I’ll take you. So we had to drive the 20 mile.
It was like going to the charity hospital downtown Houston. And, uh, so we, I had no maternity, I had bought one maternity outfit to go to the, to the Doctor’s Inn, and I didn’t, I, I took it to come home and of course the dog chewed up in the car. But anyway, it was like we had to walk all the way. Down to the hospital ’cause we had a 53 Buick that had no [00:09:00] reverse. So we had to park about 10 blocks away in a place where we could keep going. And I was walking in the rain to the hospital and I was so worried that people were gonna think my feet were, this was in April that my feet were dirty ’cause I had water spots on him.
Dorothy: Oh.
Dr. Dixie: And when I went in there, they said, okay, you come on in. And told him, go home. You know, nobody waited. You couldn’t, if you were a charity patient, no one could stay there with you. And so here I am, you know, 16, crying alone in this place. I’ve never been and I hurt. And this big old nurse, big old. Mean fat nurse come up. She said, well honey, if you’d kept your legs closed, you wouldn’t be in this position. And you know back, you can’t pick up the cell phone and call your mama. You know, you were there, you were there alone, and there were so many, this is Yale New Haven Charity Hospital, and there was so many people giving birth in April that I was on a stretcher in the hallway.
You know, [00:10:00] the wards were like, you know, 20, 30 people you were never had private room, but, but in the hallway it was so, and every shift change I was introduced as the troll off the street that had no prenatal care.
Dorothy: Say that again.
Dr. Dixie: Do you know how that makes you feel?
Dorothy: Yeah. Say that again.
Dr. Dixie: The troll off the street that has no prenatal care.
Dorothy: Ugh.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, it’s so degrading and you’re so alone and you hurt. You’re hurt and you know, I mean. I did normal childbirth before it was popular. ’cause they didn’t gimme anything. You know, I mean And honestly, I had a fourth degree tear, which wasn’t repaired until I had my second son. And I won’t even go through the wonderful things that happened when you have a fourth degree tear. But then we were in this, after he was born, we were in this enormous ward, probably about 20 people. And every baby would, every baby was at the foot of the bed in [00:11:00] a basket. There wasn’t no like nursery unless it was in desperate. You had to get up and take care of your own baby. You know, you, if you put your baby down to sleep, then you had to get it up. You had to, you had to do everything right there, five minutes after you gave birth. You know? Of course. No, we were probably in the recovery room maybe for hours, a few hours or something to make sure the baby was stable, but I mean. Right then and there, I decided charity care was not good. I don’t want anybody to have to go through that.
You know? I did one bad thing though. I would pick up my baby. Little Ralph had such gorgeous black hair, you know? And I always remembered later it was a commercial. Later on it said, too bad you had to get a Baldwin. And I would show him to all these people how beautiful his hair was. But anyway, but no, I mean those things that at the time it seemed like, what a disaster, you know?
My parents had always loved [00:12:00] me. We’d never been rich, but man, I never had to go through anything like that. He was in the Air Force and we had the Air Force Hospital right there waiting for us. Problem is they were stationed in Germany and he couldn’t, you know, he couldn’t just get up and leave.
Dorothy: Leave. Right.
Dr. Dixie: And when Ralph and I got married, he had to come home. And so I had to come home with him. It wasn’t like a choice that I could stay in Germany even.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: But, but. It was a good thing ’cause it taught me, look at what people go through. Look at what you don’t want for healthcare. It burned in my brain that I don’t wanna ever have people treated like that. You know? I mean, all the things that sometimes seem like the worst disasters really turn out to teach you something to make you a better person, to help you make other people better. And.
Dorothy: You always say that, and I, I could think of many stories that are related to where we be, who we [00:13:00] become, where we end up. But you know, I remember when I was a young woman and I just had David, my mother died, brothers, sisters with me, but I had to make some money and, you know, I just, I, I had too much at the house to leave much. And it was the time before we had really worked, but I took in wigs. I cleaned and styled wigs.
And you can’t do that anymore. You have to have a license and stuff. But, you know, that was one of my five jobs that I had. But I think when we started The Rose and I was the only one comfortable with wigs. Now you don’t probably remember this, but you know, they didn’t know how to wear ’em. They didn’t know what, how to use them or how do you style ’em? And, and uh, I thought, isn’t that interesting? That’s one little gift.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: That God made sure I knew how to do so that we could do it.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: For those that really needed it.
Dr. Dixie: Now we have a whole wig room.
Dorothy: Oh, I know, I know. But it, yeah, [00:14:00] it’s amazing. The things that, like you said, always seem like disasters that aren’t.
Dr. Dixie: Well, and when you look back, you can see there’s been a plan for your life. All the way along. So, I mean, I try to tell young women that, you know, just learn from everything that happens. Don’t fight it.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: Just, just learn and, and accept and.
Dorothy: And sometimes if you can step outside your life yourself, you can see it in a different way. It really, um, that is really so true. We get prepared.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah, and I mean now the things that would’ve just thrown me upside down when I was younger. Now I go, oh, okay. How’s that working for you? You know? I mean, I just. You know, you learn to be an observer.
Dorothy: And we’ve certainly had a lot of characters to absorb in our life.
Dr. Dixie: Yes. In our family.
Dorothy: Yes. Alright, so let’s talk about what is the biggest misconception people have about The Rose?
Dr. Dixie: Well, I think they think we’re a charity [00:15:00] care program and they don’t send us their injured patients. Come on. Come on, gang. I mean, it takes insured people to run to, you know, we take what every three insured will pay for a mammogram for an uninsured. You know, and, and I, I know a lot of these guys, they send their paying patients, oh, to the hospital, uh, imaging centers, you know, but let ’em get someone who can’t pay or not. Oh, send them.
Dorothy: They know about The Rose immediately.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. Oh, send them to The Rose.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: Which I, I’m glad they do, but they they really ought to realize we are a top flight center. A center of excellence. You don’t get that by just dragging your feet.
Dorothy: No, no.
Dr. Dixie: You know.
Dorothy: We do. We have the best equipment.
Dr. Dixie: Best equipment.
Dorothy: We have physicians that only look at breasts are always.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: You know, they know what they’re looking at. They know what they’re seeing. Makes a huge difference. We can always tell when someone has a new radiologist that’s come on, because then they’ll start sending to The Rose for lots [00:16:00] of biopsy reviews and, you know what I’m talking about?
Dr. Dixie: Biopsy review only means that they need a biopsy, but they’ve charged the patient so much the patient can’t afford ’em, so they come here. It’s not to get a second opinion on whether they need it, it’s to go to a place where they can afford it. And I’m proud it doesn’t hurt my feelings, but you know. Healthcare needs to wake up. It, it shouldn’t be just a privilege for the people with money.
Dorothy: No, that is so true.
Healthcare ought
Dr. Dixie: to be just a, the right of everybody. You know? But I think the reason our healthcare system is so awful is because we treat the symptoms. Nobody goes back and say, Hey, you know, they pull the people out of the river, but they don’t go back and see why they fell in. You know, come on, you know, most of this stuff could be prevented. But they won’t let the word get out. You know, if I can be a.
Dorothy: How much nutrition [00:17:00] training did you get when you were a doctor?
Dr. Dixie: Only how to do TPN for the people who had couldn’t eat.
Dorothy: Oh.
Dr. Dixie: That was it.
Dorothy: Hmm.
Dr. Dixie: Okay.
Dorothy: How much do you think there is today?
Dr. Dixie: None. Still none. I’ve, I’ve talked to these young doctors that are coming out. They don’t even know what visceral fat is, and it’s dangerous and it causes disease. They say, oh no, it’s just a body type. It’s hereditary. They say diabetes is hereditary. Nonsense. The crap you eat is hereditary. You eat the same thing your relatives did. And that’s why diabetes runs in your family. Come on.
Dorothy: Well, it certainly will be nice when you get your hospital and you can really focus on this, Dixie.
Dr. Dixie: And I can really say what I think. Huh?
Dorothy: Ah, yes. Do you see some of the most interesting cases, patients situations?
Dr. Dixie: I saw Merkel cell carcinoma.
Dorothy: You saw what?
Dr. Dixie: Merkel cell on the breast.
Dorothy: All right. Explain that to us.
Dr. Dixie: That’s what got my hero, Jimmy Buffett. On, Merkel cell. It’s a skin cancer that grows out and it looks like a half of a little raspberry sitting outside the skin. You know, of course I had to take a picture, but you know, I do. We see stuff that heavens, you know.
Dorothy: That’s just rare, rare.
Dr. Dixie: Oh yeah.
Dorothy: How many cancers and fibro adenomas did you see?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, I have a 20-year-old. She had a big, huge fibro adenoma. I have a rule over three centimeters. It should go. Well, this child had a five centimeter fibro adenoma. I said, no, that’s gotta go. And it had been core biopsied. It said the fibro anoma. Well, when it was removed, it had ductal carcinoma. [00:22:00] Lobular carcinoma, and Malignant phyllodes in this thing.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Wow.
Dr. Dixie: At 20.
Dorothy: Mm.
Dr. Dixie: And that’s been 10 years ago. So I mean, yeah. You know, I, I’m very respectful of the breast. You take the R outta breast and you have beast, and it will get you if you don’t respect it.
Dorothy: That is true.
Dr. Dixie: It is. And, and it’s just getting more and more complicated.
Dorothy: Well, did you always say if, if we could figure out the breast cancer, we’d figure out any of them?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, absolutely. You know, and breast cancers, they have six to seven times more insulin receptors than a normal breast cell. Any cancer that you eat is gonna get sucked right into the cancer first. You know, and I just begged my patients, I said, now when you go through treatment, please, you know, cut the, cut the sugar. Well, I told you, I told you about my ex-husband. I mean, now he, he passed away from [00:23:00] a blood clot to his brain, but he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, stage four liver metastasis. This man was a neurosurgeon, Jim. And, uh, he, about three and a half years ago, he called me up and he says, and we’ve always been good friends, you know, he text me, he said, I guess this is it, kid. They say, I’ve got six months to live, and I sent him Thomas Reed’s work on the metabolic handling of cancer and his oncologist was, was trying to funnel him, can sugar, you know, and uh, so, but he listed, he read all of this stuff and he’s a smart man and he went from like 240 pounds to 155. But he lasted about four years. And he had a stroke, which was nothing to do with this, but he sent me CAT scans, the reports. The, the tumor no longer took up any, his tumor markers went down to normal. The [00:24:00] tumor was, I mean, the, it was there, the shell of it, but it wasn’t taking up any sugar or anything, any, any of the dye that they inject. The three liver metastasis, they shrunk a little bit. Now this is not a cure.
I mean, I’m not saying this is a cure, but he said he’d never felt better. He was out flying his airplane and playing his trumpet in the little bar in Austin. And I mean, we, we kept track and then, and then his, you know, and his wife let me know that he’d had a blood clot and they’d tried, but I mean, he went the way he’d wanna go.
Dorothy: Oh yeah.
Dr. Dixie: He didn’t sit, he had no pain.
Dorothy: It’s all about quality of life.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dorothy: Yeah. And, and that is one thing I think we could say for a lot of people, The Rose being here really changed. Not just saved a life, but let them have a different quality of life.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. And, and some dignity and.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You know, I mean.
Dorothy: And some hope.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah. There’s always hope.
Dorothy: Always hope.
Dr. Dixie: See, see my shirt says [00:25:00] hope.
Dorothy: Always hope.
Dr. Dixie: I’ll always have hope. Until the good Lord beams me home.
Dorothy: Alright, well Dixie, let’s hope that’s not very soon at all. ’cause you’ve got a lot more stuff to do.
Dr. Dixie: I know. That’s what everybody says.
Dorothy: Yeah. You got a lot more to do. All right.
Dr. Dixie: And I’m gonna do it too with everybody’s help. That was, that was good.
Dorothy: That was good. Until we do this again?
Dr. Dixie: Yes.
Dorothy: Saying goodbye when we.
Dr. Dixie: When we open the hospital. She’ll be there for the ribbon cutting.
Dorothy: From Let’s Talk About Your Breasts.
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 make the difference to a person in need. And remember, [00:26:00] self-care is not selfish. It’s essential.
