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Transcript

14: More Than Meets the Eye: Finding Answers · Still Caring

• 0:03
  Abby Fox (Intro): Welcome to the Still Caring Podcast,
• 0:05
  presented by Stillwater Medical.
• 0:07
  Joe Akin (Intro): Here, community is at the heart of healthcare.
• 0:09
  Katon Lunsford (Intro): Through honest conversations and shared experiences
• 0:12
  Abby Fox (Intro): we explore what it means to care for our health—
• 0:14
  Joe Akin (Intro): and each other.
• 0:15
  Katon Lunsford (Intro): Because better health takes a village
• 0:17
  and you're part of ours.
• 0:19
  Katon Lunsford (Host): Hi, everyone.
• 0:19
  Today, we are joined by Stacey Frazier, who's here to share a little bit about
• 0:24
  her health journey of what started out as a routine visit and what later,
• 0:28
  you know, she says saved her life.
• 0:29
  And so, we're so grateful for her willingness to share this story with us.
• 0:34
  Could you share a little bit about yourself and just a little bit of your
• 0:37
  back history with the health journey?
• 0:39
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 0:39
  Of course.
• 0:40
  I'm Stacey Frazier.
• 0:41
  I have been a resident of Stillwater since 1994.
• 0:44
  And I work for Northern Oklahoma College as the Division Chair
• 0:48
  for the Language Arts Division.
• 0:50
  I've been with Northern Oklahoma College for 15 years, and I love being able
• 0:56
  to teach young minds how to think and how to be great members of society.
• 1:02
  And so, originally,
• 1:07
  I go to Dr.
• 1:08
  Corby Smithton, he is my primary care.
• 1:11
  And I've been going to him since probably 2003, whenever
• 1:16
  he began practice in Stillwater.
• 1:19
  And so, we have a very, very long-standing relationship.
• 1:23
  He's my doctor, he's my husband's doctor.
• 1:27
  Colby was my son's doctor.
• 1:28
  Corby's now my son's doctor.
• 1:31
  So, we have been a part of the Stillwater community for a long
• 1:36
  time, and Corby is my go-to with any health question that I have.
• 1:42
  Host: Again, thank you for being here and sharing your story, and also being a
• 1:45
  listener of the podcast and reaching out.
• 1:46
  We're really grateful for you.
• 1:48
  So, could you tell us a little bit more about your experience?
• 1:51
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 1:51
  Of course.
• 1:52
  So, the particular experience that I was referring to whenever I reached out to
• 1:56
  you guys to tell you the story of how SMC saved my life was my cancer journey.
• 2:05
  Back in 2021, I used to commute to Tonkawa for work every day, and I was
• 2:12
  driving to Tonkawa, and I noticed that something was weird with my vision.
• 2:17
  I rubbed
• 2:20
  my left eye, and realized that I couldn't see my steering wheel in my right eye,
• 2:23
  and I thought, "That's not normal.
• 2:26
  That's not right."
• 2:27
  That was in
• 2:29
  the morning.
• 2:30
  As soon as I got to work, I called Corby's office and he said, "I
• 2:34
  want to see you this afternoon because, no, that's not normal."
• 2:39
  And so, I taught my classes, left work, went immediately to see Corby.
• 2:45
  And he did an examination and he said, "I don't know what's going on.
• 2:49
  I want to send you over to see Dr.
• 2:52
  Jonathan Drummond, who is the ophthalmologist here in town."
• 2:56
  And so, the very next day, I went and saw Dr.
• 2:58
  Drummond, and he saw that there was some—he called it a flare in my eye,
• 3:05
  and he immediately called for an MRI and sent me to the hospital for an MRI.
• 3:12
  I don't know that it would be an emergency MRI, but one that he was
• 3:17
  pushing to get done very quickly.
• 3:19
  Because as a 46-year-old woman, that's not something that was normal.
• 3:26
  And so, we did the MRI later that week, and there wasn't really anything
• 3:32
  that they could tell on the MRI.
• 3:35
  There wasn't a tumor or anything that would have been affecting my vision.
• 3:38
  So, he referred me to Dean McGee in Oklahoma City with
• 3:44
  a neurologic ophthalmologist.
• 3:46
  And I saw him.
• 3:49
  We did many, many tests, many pictures of my eyes.
• 3:55
  All the while, Dr.
• 3:56
  Drummond was still in contact with me, seeing how the Dean McGee
• 4:02
  experience was, and Corby was always checking in to see how I was
• 4:07
  doing, what process was going on.
• 4:09
  And, you know, I always made sure to put that Corby Smith
• 4:12
  then was my primary care, and Dr.
• 4:14
  Drummond was the one—even though Dean McGee isn't in the SMC community,
• 4:17
  they still communicated with them.
• 4:20
  We did a sleep study because they thought maybe I had sleep apnea, and
• 4:27
  it would have been something that could have caused me to lose vision.
• 4:31
  And I did the sleep study here at SMC, and Dr.
• 4:35
  MG found that I did have sleep apnea.
• 4:38
  So, I was put on a CPAP, but Dean McGee wasn't convinced, and they determined
• 4:44
  that I had a stroke in my optic nerve.
• 4:47
  And they decided to send me to a hematologist in order to determine
• 4:52
  why I had a stroke in my optic nerve.
• 4:56
  And I was referred to Dr.
• 4:57
  Cole at the Stillwater Cancer Center, and I saw him.
• 5:03
  It took us a year to determine what was the root cause of the problem.
• 5:11
  I did many blood tests with him.
• 5:13
  It was a couple every two months thing.
• 5:18
  He finally determined that my iron was low.
• 5:25
  I'm going to sidebar on that, but every time I went and saw Dr.
• 5:28
  Cole, I could tell that he was processing everything, and he was
• 5:32
  thinking about all aspects of my blood work and my test results.
• 5:37
  And he was working through those while I was watching him do it, which is amazing
• 5:43
  to me to see someone think like that.
• 5:46
  And he gave me some iron pills.
• 5:49
  He said, "I want to try these for a few months."
• 5:52
  Every time he would tell me, "I want to do what is least invasive
• 5:55
  to you and least painful for you."
• 5:58
  And he said, you know, "I could do a spinal tap, but I don't
• 6:01
  want to do that right now.
• 6:02
  I want to see what the root cause of it is."
• 6:06
  And the iron pills didn't really improve my iron.
• 6:09
  So, he gave me two IV iron infusions, and it really didn't do anything.
• 6:15
  And that was the point where he said, "Okay, we can do two things.
• 6:20
  We can do a endoscopy and a colonoscopy or a spinal tap.
• 6:25
  I would rather do the endoscopy and colonoscopy first, because it's
• 6:28
  least invasive and least painful."
• 6:31
  and so, I said, "Certainly, let's do that."
• 6:33
  That was basically a year after the optic nerve stroke.
• 6:40
  And so in May, I did the colonoscopy and the endoscopy, and that
• 6:45
  is when the gastroenterologist found a mass in my colon.
• 6:52
  And he took biopsies of everything.
• 6:55
  And then, that was a Thursday when I had my colonoscopy.
• 6:58
  I got the call the following Monday from Dr.
• 7:01
  Patel, and they said that it was cancer.
• 7:06
  And then,
• 7:09
  that was a Monday.
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  Two days later, I got a call from Dr.
• 7:12
  Cara Pence's office to tell me, you know, "Come in so we can schedule your surgery."
• 7:20
  And so, I came in on that Wednesday.
• 7:23
  You know, she saw me.
• 7:25
  She did her initial exam, told me what she saw from the results, that
• 7:32
  it was cancer in the cecum of my colon, which—she's a light too.
• 7:40
  Whenever you walk in knowing that you have cancer and she sees you and hugs
• 7:45
  you, it just makes you think, "Okay, iit's bad, but it might not be so terrible."
• 7:53
  And it happened so fast for me that seeing her that quickly I think
• 7:58
  helped me deal with it better.
• 8:01
  And she said, "You know, this isn't normal.
• 8:04
  46-year-old women don't necessarily have colon cancer if they don't
• 8:09
  have, you know, a long line of colon cancer in their family."
• 8:13
  And she said, "I want to do a genetic test to see were these genetic
• 8:17
  markers," because she wanted to know why I had it that, that early as well.
• 8:23
  And so, she had me do the blood test for the genetic markers for cancer.
• 8:28
  And then, we scheduled the surgery for the following week.
• 8:33
  And I went into the medical center, and Dr.
• 8:36
  Pence removed a third of my colon and so many lymph nodes that I didn't
• 8:41
  even know were inside of a body to make sure that she got everything and
• 8:47
  to see how advanced the cancer was.
• 8:52
  And then, a few days, you know, a few—I don't know however long it was, she
• 8:58
  called me back and said that they got the results and that I was going to go see Dr.
• 9:03
  Cole again for those.
• 9:05
  And Dr.
• 9:05
  Cole told me that it was stage I T2, was my cancer diagnosis, which
• 9:11
  meant that the cancer was stage I.
• 9:15
  The T2 meant that it had just begun to encroach on the lining of my colon.
• 9:20
  So, it had not penetrated the lining of my colon, so I did not have to
• 9:26
  have chemotherapy or radiation because it was maintained in that one area.
• 9:34
  So, we did not have to do any of that.
• 9:37
  We just continued on with our treatment as far as rehabilitation and everything.
• 9:46
  And I forgot to say that when I got the call from Dr.
• 9:51
  Patel telling me that I had cancer, Corby called me the following day, that morning,
• 9:58
  to say, "I just got your results."
• 10:02
  And in Corby words, "What the heck?"
• 10:05
  is what he said.
• 10:06
  So, I'm cancer-free.
• 10:09
  I actually just had a colonoscopy on Friday.
• 10:12
  And everything is normal, and I don't have to have another one for five
• 10:17
  years, which is a celebratory time for me, because having the cancer
• 10:25
  in '22, then having to have another colonoscopy the following year, and then
• 10:30
  another, so it's just been a process.
• 10:34
  Host: So, it's almost like whiplash because it was a whole
• 10:36
  year of, I mean, all these tests and trying to figure it out.
• 10:39
  And then, I mean, you said, what—what was it?
• 10:41
  One week, you had the answers and then the results and then the surgery.
• 10:45
  It's a quick turnaround, and that's a lot to process, I feel
• 10:49
  like, in that was short of a time.
• 10:50
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 10:50
  It was.
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  And, you know, I'm not positive as to why it happened so quickly, but I
• 10:57
  think because knowing who I am, I am a researcher, I am someone who goes and
• 11:05
  tries to find answers to everything, and reasons why, and what have you.
• 11:10
  And I think that had I not had that quick turnaround time, I probably
• 11:14
  would have gotten caught in the Google—
• 11:17
  Host: The spiraling.
• 11:18
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 11:18
  Yeah, and I would have spiraled, and I would have had a lot of
• 11:23
  terrible thoughts, honestly.
• 11:27
  And so, knowing that everything went so quickly, I think that was the ultimate
• 11:32
  plan anyway for me because I don't know how I would have handled it had
• 11:36
  I have had so much time to process.
• 11:39
  Host: Yeah.
• 11:39
  That makes sense.
• 11:40
  But up until this point, and correct me if I'm wrong, you hadn't had
• 11:43
  any health issues or health scares?
• 11:45
  Nothing
• 11:47
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 11:47
  No.
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  Just normal routine.
• 11:50
  I mean, when I was a teenager, I had
• 11:54
  HPV.
• 11:55
  So, that was really the only major issue that I had with my health.
• 12:02
  Host: So now, that you've had this time to, like, reflect and process, I mean,
• 12:06
  what did that feel like going from being healthy to a cancer diagnosis?
• 12:12
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 12:12
  It was a lot to take on, honestly, because having that full year
• 12:19
  not knowing why I lost my vision.
• 12:22
  And, you know, I had the process in my brain of, "You've lost your vision.
• 12:27
  Are you ever going to get that vision back?"
• 12:29
  And then, "Oh, by the way, you have sleep apnea.
• 12:32
  Here's a CPAP.
• 12:33
  By the way, we need to do this.
• 12:35
  You have these blood issues."
• 12:36
  And so,
• 12:40
  my mind was in a spiral on all of the things that I needed to make sure that
• 12:45
  I covered on my health journey anyway.
• 12:49
  But having every person in place allowed me to have someone, regardless
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  of what question I had, to contact.
• 13:00
  The majority of them were here in Stillwater associated with SMC,
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  and that's why I say SMC saved my life, because Ithere was every
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  piece of the puzzle in there.
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  Host: Yeah.
• 13:12
  And so, you've kind of already said what I was going to ask, but
• 13:15
  this was a collaborative process.
• 13:16
  And so, what does that feel like knowing that you had support from
• 13:21
  all these various people on your medical team to help you find answers?
• 13:24
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 13:24
  It felt reassuring.
• 13:25
  Host: Yeah.
• 13:26
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 13:26
  Like I said, whenever, you know, seeing Dr.
• 13:29
  Pence, just walking into her office and the light that she brings when you have
• 13:35
  one of those darkest times because you're thinking you have colon cancer, "Am I
• 13:42
  going to have to have an ostomy bag?
• 13:44
  Are they going to have to take…?"
• 13:45
  All of the questions.
• 13:48
  And she was so upbeat and so light that it helped me deal with it.
• 13:52
  And she always reassured me, "Corby is here for you.
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  Dr.
• 13:58
  Cole is here for you.
• 13:59
  I'm here for you.
• 14:01
  It doesn't matter.
• 14:02
  Whatever question you have, we can answer it to the best of our abilities."
• 14:07
  So, having that team and knowing that they all talk was so reassuring to me.
• 14:14
  Host: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Yeah.
• 14:14
  That's awesome.
• 14:16
  And so, kind of another reflection question, but since it's been a
• 14:19
  few years now since that, what do you think you've learned or
• 14:22
  taken away from this experience?
• 14:25
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 14:25
  I've learned to take care of myself a little bit more.
• 14:31
  Yeah, because I had HPV, I was always one who was like, "If something
• 14:35
  changes, go see the doctor."
• 14:39
  And my parents were not—my dad was a rancher, a farmer.
• 14:45
  And so, you only go to the doctor when—
• 14:48
  Host: Something's hanging off or—
• 14:50
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 14:50
  Right.
• 14:51
  When it's detrimental.
• 14:53
  Host: Yes.
• 14:54
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 14:54
  But because I had that HPV, it just helped me realize, you know,
• 15:00
  you are a woman, and you need to have health checks all the time.
• 15:04
  And so, I was always someone who, when something changed, I would go
• 15:09
  see the doctor, but I didn't push.
• 15:12
  Like, I pushed when all of this happened with my vision.
• 15:16
  And I attribute part of that to the whole team being there and being together,
• 15:22
  communicating with one another to figure out what was wrong with me and determine
• 15:26
  what's the best course of action.
• 15:28
  And having someone in your corner, so many in your corner, just helps me realize that
• 15:37
  you gott to take care of yourself, because if you don't, you're not going to be
• 15:42
  there for the future that you have seen.
• 15:46
  And I'm a teacher.
• 15:47
  So, you know, I want to be a part of society that helps our world be
• 15:53
  a better place, and I can't do that if I don't take care of myself.
• 15:57
  Host: Yeah.
• 15:57
  And so, as we end this conversation, we like to have a challenge to care,
• 16:02
  which is something listeners can do for themselves or for the community
• 16:05
  to improve all of our health.
• 16:07
  So, what would your challenge to care be?
• 16:09
  Stacey Frazier, Ed.D.:
• 16:09
  My challenge to care would be to get your checkups.
• 16:12
  I mean, I've watched people in my family not do that, and lost people in
• 16:19
  my family because they didn't do it.
• 16:25
  My father was one of those people.
• 16:29
  He was not someone who went to the doctor.
• 16:33
  And when
• 16:38
  he finally went to the doctor, we only had him for a month, and then he passed away.
• 16:45
  So,
• 16:49
  don't take anything for granted.
• 16:52
  If something is bothering you, go see someone.
• 16:56
  And we're lucky enough to be in Stillwater and have the community that we have
• 17:01
  and the medical support that we have.
• 17:04
  Host: I'm sorry I made you cry . Thank you for sharing that, though.
• 17:07
  I mean, so true, though.
• 17:08
  You can't know how to help yourself if you don't know what the problem is.
• 17:12
  So, yeah, I love that.
• 17:15
  And you're the perfect example of that, of how, you know, something routine can
• 17:20
  change your life and save your life.
• 17:21
  And so, it's just important to know so have that power over yourself.
• 17:26
  I love that.