PEMBROKE PINES, FLA. (WSVN) - They say gratitude is everything, and a traveling chef wheeled in her appreciation for the nurses and staff who took care of her with home-cooked food.
“Oh, my goodness! We’ve got beans and rice and macaroni and cheese,” said a nurse.
Fifty-four-year-old Nancy Smith said she is a cancer survivor who is grateful to the medical staff at Broward Health Medical Center.
“I brought some lunch today to feed them just to say thank you. Everybody here is like family to me,” Smith said.
Smith divides her time between Pembroke Pines and the Bahamas.
She was diagnosed with stage 1 and 2 breast cancer.
After her double mastectomy, she said she practiced not thinking about her cancer and did think about recovery.
“You just don’t put it in your mind, like I’ve told people, you don’t put it in your head because, if you think about it, it takes you away,” Smith said. “I was that person. I never thought about it. I went to bed without putting it in my head, and thanks even for all the doctors who have seen me here. They were a great help to me.”
Dr. Alia Abdulla said Smith is currently cancer free.
“Nancy Smith is one of my patients, and she is very dear to me,” Abdulla said. “The key part of her cancer is that we treated her based on her individual tumor, which is something that is changing in the way we are treating cancers in general.”
Abdulla said Smith’s recovery was in part to what she recommends all her patients: to have a strong support system.
“Every time she came to an appointment, she did bring family, she brought her son, I met her daughter, I met her husband, and we were all able to formulate a plan for her to help her get through this time,” Abdulla said, “and that is very important in cancer treatment, and I think that that’s something that we as Broward Health focus.”
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