In honor of Billie Ann Peterson
Billie Ann Peterson has always been physically fit, but one morning she started having trouble breathing while exercising. Her doctor thought she had asthma but it turned out that she had a 10-pound tumor the size of a football pressing up against her diaphragm. Doctors also found multiple tumors near her kidneys and under her left arm. She had radiation and surgery, but the tumors under her arm returned. Her surgeon removed the new tumors, but they returned a third time in 2004.
That’s when she decided to see oncology surgeon Dr. H.J. Kim, who made the decision to cut away enough tissue so that no trace of cancer—not even one cell—was left behind.
“I thought UNC would be so impersonal because it’s so big, but I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she says. I remember when [nurse coordinator] Brenda McCall walked with me to get x-rays. That kind of personal attention when you have cancer is so meaningful.”
Billie Ann has since become a donor, fundraiser and ambassador for UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and now supports the new N.C. Cancer Hospital. “This is our cancer hospital,” she says. “And I trust that we have the expertise needed for this serious disease.”