Cindy Lesley was feeling fine in the summer of 2012, so you can imagine her surprise when she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer.
“I was there for a routine physical where you get a chest X-ray, and they found a mass,” says Cindy.
“I was referred to an oncologist-radiologist, and after biopsies I was diagnosed.”
Being diagnosed with such an advanced stage of cancer, Cindy didn’t have the luxury of shopping around for different treatment options or specialists. She needed to start treatment right away. Her care team was not based in Memphis and included some of the most well-known oncologists in the United States. But after years of treatment, she decided to research other options available to her.
“I ended up coming to Baptist Cancer Center to meet with Dr. Robbins and Dr. Osarogiagbon,” says Cindy.
“Dr. O. has got to be some kind of super oncologist. He is so there for his patients, and he is so focused on research and on ways of mapping a cancer.”
But what most impressed Cindy is how the team of oncologists and other specialists were so persistent and thorough in their discovery of the origins and characteristics of her cancer, never stopping until the nature of her illness was completely understood.
“The whole time since the day I was diagnosed I was never sick,” says Cindy. “I think most of my illness was from the chemo that I went through, and my first set of doctors saw that I felt so good all the time so they didn’t look further for other things happening in my disease. But the Baptist Cancer Center here went that extra step and they found what was going on.”
Cindy is convinced that she was given the best care in the world at Baptist. And today, she is cancer free.
“You don’t have to go all over the world to look for someone that’s better because it is all right here at Baptist,” says Cindy. “Coming here was the first time I really had hope; it was the first time I’d ever been told that I might really get rid of my cancer, and I did.”
