A Center of Compassion

Breast Cancer

Beverly Neubert first came to the Cancer Institute at UT Medical Center in August of 2009 for what felt like a mosquito bite on her chest.  “I touched it, and I just knew it was cancer,” she says. Beverly had decided long before she was diagnosed that if she ever got breast cancer she would have a double mastectomy. She recounts that telling this to Dr. John Bell, her surgical oncologist, was the beginning of their friendship. “He asked me very formally if I wanted to perhaps have a lumpectomy instead, and I told him ‘Lumpectomy my foot. The girls have been voted off the island!’  He just put his head in his hands and laughed. We weren’t so formal after that.”

Through exploration during her surgery, doctors at the Cancer Institute discovered that Beverly’s chest tumor had metastasized to six of her lymph nodes. “I could have gone to any of the specialty cancer hospitals in the Southeast to treat the mets,” she says, “but I wanted to be close to home.” That sentiment went far beyond just the distance she would have to travel for treatment; Beverly was seeking the kind of compassion and care unique to UT Medical Center. “Doctors at UT don’t treat me like patient number three. I’m Beverly. They ask me about which trails I’ve hiked recently. They’ve laughed with me, given me hugs, and Dr. Susan Huntsinger even told me news about my progress with tears in her eyes.”

The culmination of Beverly’s relationship with her doctors in the Cancer Institute came when she sought out reconstruction from her mastectomy. “I wanted to have it right away, but I wanted a very specific type of reconstruction, and at the time UT didn’t have any surgeons who performed it,” she recalls. During a checkup, Dr. Bell inquired about her thoughts on reconstruction, and she reminded him that UT didn’t have a doctor who performed the surgery. “He turned around with this big grin on his face and said, ‘I found you one!’”

That surgeon was Dr. Kathleen Herbig.  “She is an angel sent from heaven,” Beverly exclaims, “and she must have a superhuman bladder.”  The majority of the type of reconstruction surgery that Dr. Herbig performs is done under a microscope and lasts an average of 12-14 hours. She had performed a 19 hour surgery the day before Beverly’s. “She told me in the recovery room that she had never let a patient leave the hospital in fewer than six days.  I think we both took that as a kind of challenge because I was recovered enough to go home in five,” says Beverly. “She made me feel like I was her one and only patient.  Her dedication and concern for the people she heals is astounding.”

“I don’t know how they do it,” Beverly says about the level of compassion she encountered at UT Medical Center. “These doctors deal with cancer day in and day out. You’d think they’d have some sort of veneer but my pain was their pain, my victories their victories. My surgeon, my oncologist, my radiologist, the nurses in the Chemo Hut—they care as a unit.  My faith in God and the care from UT Medical Center will see me through this journey.”