Share Your Story: Freddye Stover

03/22/22 • 45 min

Freddye is a mother, a nurse, and a singer. She has been a nurse for 34 years! She has been a professional singer for 25 years. She currently works as a GI surgical oncology outpatient nurse with pancreatic, rectal, and colon cancer patients. She performs for charitable events every year. She has performed in local hospitals. As a twice breast cancer survivor, she gives her time and energy to those who are fighting their cancer and to those who have lost a loved one to cancer.

01:39: Tell me about becoming a nurse and why oncology?
04:07: My mother ended up dying of two different kinds of cancers.
06:46: Did nursing school prepare you to be an oncology nurse back then?
09:27: I was 30 when I graduated from nursing school.
10:52: Take us back to the beginning of your cancer journey.
13:36: Cancer runs rampant in my family on both sides.
15:43: You had a mastectomy on one breast?
17:03: I told him I said I think it's back.
20:04: I had to laugh my way through it both times because my friends and family were so morbid.
22:52: They say nurses make the worst patients.
25:02: She had lymphoma and colon cancer.
28:04: I think he died less than three months within the diagnosis.
31:15: We've seen a lot as far as cancer and death in our family, but I'm trying to understand it.
31:57: What was your worst moment?
34:33: What about your best moment?
35:58: I was the first one to graduate from a four-year college.
38:52: If you could only do one thing to improve health care in the US, what would it be and why?
40:13: Thriver Rapid Fire Questions.
41:31: Aside from Cancer U, what is one resource that you would recommend for cancer patients and caregivers?

Resources

01:39: Tell me about becoming a nurse and why oncology?
04:07: My mother ended up dying of two different kinds of cancers.
06:46: Did nursing school prepare you to be an oncology nurse back then?
09:27: I was 30 when I graduated from nursing school.
10:52: Take us back to the beginning of your cancer journey.
13:36: Cancer runs rampant in my family on both sides.
15:43: You had a mastectomy on one breast?
17:03: I told him I said I think it's back.
20:04: I had to laugh my way through it both times because my friends and family were so morbid.
22:52: They say nurses make the worst patients.
25:02: She had lymphoma and colon cancer.
28:04: I think he died less than three months within the diagnosis.
31:15: We've seen a lot as far as cancer and death in our family, but I'm trying to understand it.
31:57: What was your worst moment?
34:33: What about your best moment?
35:58: I was the first one to graduate from a four-year college.
38:52: If you could only do one thing to improve health care in the US, what would it be and why?
40:13: Thriver Rapid Fire Questions.
41:31: Aside from Cancer U, what is one resource that you would recommend for cancer patients and caregivers?

Resources

Previous Episode

Share Your Story: Carrie Verrocchio

CarrieVee (Verrocchio) Cancer Survivor, and Caregiver, MBA, is a Motivational Speaker, Published Author, Podcast Host, and Certified Transformation, Forgiveness, and REBT Coach who helps those who have forgotten how to dream, overcome their excuses and live the life they were created to live.

She is the founder of the Radical Empowerment Method - a program designed to walk people through the exact method she herself used to move from a life of feeling invisible to a life of empowered success and action.

01:24: My cancer journey began this past December.
03:36: My mother was in her fifties when her first diagnosis of colorectal cancer came.
05:41: Do you have children?
07:34: If you knew that you had this gene, would you have had kids?
09:08: How was your experience as a caregiver different from your experience as a patient?
12:25: Did you find any support as a caregiver?
14:5: What does post-operative care look like as a cancer survivor?
17:56: What was your worst moment?
20:24: What was your best moment?
21:44: What is the one thing you wish you had known at the very beginning of your cancer journey?
24:27: I had a hysterectomy in 2009, but they left my ovaries in because I was premenopausal.
27:03: If you could only do one thing to improve health care in the US, what would it be and why?
29:17: What is a share plan and if you want one how do you get it?
31:54: Thriver Rapid Fire Questions.
33:20: Aside from Cancer U, what is one resource you would recommend for cancer patients and caregivers?
35:17: Unforgiveness in your life is the one thing that will keep you stuck.

Resources

Next Episode

Share Your Story: Elizabeth Benditt

Liz Benditt is currently President and CEO of The Balm Box, a self-care and gifting site for breast cancer patients. In addition to teaching undergraduate business marketing courses at the University of Kansas, Benditt also serves on the Education First Shawnee Mission board of directors and volunteers with National Charity League. She lives in the Kansas City suburbs with her husband and two children.

01:54: Take us back to the very beginning.
04:16: We'd like you to have surgery within the week.
05:58: 11 months after having been diagnosed with melanoma, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
08:32: I ended up in the hospital for two weeks while they tried to figure out a drug protocol that would get me off I.V. Calcium.
10:27: Thyroid cancer is very common.
11:36: For whatever reason, my body needed a higher-than-normal range of calcium for normal calcium production.
13:38: It was on my nose, and it was just big enough that it required plastic surgery to cover it.
16:06: This was what was going to help me avoid being disfigured.
18:47: The fatigue hit me like a brick.
20:53: What was your best moment?
21:52: What is the one thing you wish you had known at the very beginning of your cancer journey?
23:03: If you could only do one thing to improve health care in the US, what would it be and why?
24:31: Thriver Rapid Fire Questions
25:59: Aside from Cancer U, what is one resource you would recommend for cancer patients and caregivers?
26:54: Then the pandemic hit and suddenly, I wasn't super busy anymore.
30:52: My vision is to get beyond breast cancer and to offer packages for a whole variety of cancer treatments.

Resources