Bev, a retired school teacher shares her story. Survives stage 4 breast cancer.

[Music] i am beverly bradley and i’m retired which means i do lots of things but i’m a former teacher what draw me to bev when i first met her was her remarkable energy here’s someone that was a schoolteacher her entire life but even after she retired she never really stopped teaching she would get involved in her church and her grandkids lives and it made me think that this was a pretty special person what brought me to dr dossary’s office was my oncologist referral he wanted to know if i had a surgeon i preferred i quipped what in a rolodex and so he said well do you want the best well i had to say yes to that and he sent me to dr dossary dr dossery i find unique first of all when i came in he didn’t rush me he took his time and i’ve never known a doctor not to look at his watch secondly what impressed me is he encouraged and liked questions and i had a page of type questions and when i was done he just said do you have any more i could tell he was genuinely interested in finding out about me not as a cancer patient but as a person he dealt with the whole person she came to me with probably the worst type of breast cancer you could have it’s triple negative which means that some of the conventional therapies don’t work what was worse was that it was also in her lungs and in her you know in her breast and it that upstaged the type of cancer she had the survivability was quite low stage four triple negative breast cancer it’s the worst kind of cancer you could have my greatest struggle was in a change of identity from being the one that did for others helped others and was strong to a weak person who had to accept help it was a process i fought against but finally i recognized admitting your weakness is a strength and people enjoy doing things for me and so once i accepted that i moved forward with that struggle she struck me as somebody that was very strong and had a deep sense of faith and she used that to her advantage she was able to rally her friends and family around her get the support of her church and really fight this thing and i really thought that that was special what are my pillars of strength twofold god first of all i would read psalm 27 1 that the lord is your light and your salvation whom do you have to fear and i realized of course i was afraid but not in a cosmic sense we get through this and a close second is my beautiful family her surgery went incredibly well she was somebody that exercised she ate well she did everything we we told her to do and she was able to make a good recovery i was very happy with the results very happy we were able to clean out all residual disease my nutrition regimen changed when my surgeon and others gave me different advice and i did research and really plant-based whole foods has many many benefits i haven’t gone on it perfectly i’d say 70-80 percent but i decided to reduce my risk factor so i changed my nutrition we eat a lot from our garden and surrounding farms and i started exercising as a teacher i sat there and graded papers mostly so uh the chemo made it so i couldn’t walk a block and then two blocks and my surgeon probably laughed i had to to call him when i walked a mile uh it was a milestone but i exercise almost every day i eat better and i read a book called um radical remission and she has seven uh techniques that people use that had radical remission and i was already doing five of them from being supported by loving people not having any unforgiveness having a strong spiritual connection having a strong social connection but the two i wasn’t doing was proper nutrition and exercise and again i don’t want to give false hope there’s not a magic formula but i just want to reduce my risks she beat the odds she had a remarkable surgery to remove any and all cancer that was left she’s been disease free since that time and she continues to make a lot of progress with her nutrition with her health and her exercise and it’s a testament to her own strength and her own ability to overcome adversity my life is also different after cancer because i have a new urgency realizing i almost didn’t have life or might not have had it and i have a renewed understanding of how precious life is it’s as if i got a second chance after bev recovered from her surgery she asked me how she could give back to the community she was always somebody that had given back to the community she was a teacher for many years but she felt that she wanted to also contribute her ability to write her ability to educate to the lives of other cancer survivors and so she continues to do that to this day she writes for various cancer magazines she mentors other cancer patients she is a remarkable resource for any and all that needed silver linings is very important to me dr dossery had a copy of my book which was foisted on him already so he knew i was a writer and he had a blog space on his silver lining web page so he asked if i would do that and i said i’d love to so i’m still doing it two years later writing blogs that hopefully help cancer patients deal with some of the things you have to go through and um i guess i like best of all though the one-on-one with silver linings when i get a chance to mentor other people we start out as strangers one girl passed the restaurant twice so i went out and said is that you and she said yes and she came in and later she admitted she goes bev i was afraid to come in i said what am i doing meeting a stranger but by the end we were laughing and crying together and hugging because there’s this sisterhood of suffering there’s a real sisterhood when you’ve when you’ve been through this hell that’s called cancer and so i love the one-on-one connections i love helping people i also like some of the organizing parts and and uh going to different events and and spreading the word about what silver linings does in terms of uh mentoring even free makeup classes our outreach with support groups we just hope to bring compassion to las vegas over the years bev has become a great friend of mine she has taught me a lot made me a better doctor and i count on her to help mentor other patients in my practice folks that come to me with new diagnoses and need support she’s just been the greatest human and great support network i hope to leave a couple legacies if that’s not greedy i want to leave a legacy of silver lining that uh it i hope it’ll keep taking off and reach more and more people compassionately uh vegas needs this and my most important legacy is through my children who are now adults and my grandchildren i want uh to know that i impacted them uh i’m kind of like the crazy professor grandma they come over and they have to learn about snowflakes and who studied them and they have to learn about gravity and uh i think if one thing i’m role modeling through all that is that i have a passion for learning and the same thing with my students i hope the next generation and after can remember that learning is fun uh i had people come in going i hate all grammar and i said well then come up to the board and draw a car and i drew the basic of the car and i said now now now slam it modify it and they were putting things on and then i taught adjectives through the wheels on it’s a red car uh i try to make make it fun and i hope they remember that other people have called just this year and made me cry my eyes out uh saying what i meant one guy had served six years in prison and he called and said you were right and straightened up his act and those kind of things are rare but they mean a lot [Music] you