Joni (00:00):
This all began probably about 2022 when my mammogram kept coming back with, “Let’s do this again. We have a little spot. We’re not sure.” We for two years did that. I went to a breast specialist in Abilene, which is our hometown. She goes, “There’s no way that’s cancer. I’m not worried about it. ” She did everything. Well, by this time I had noticed that the cancer, which I didn’t know was cancer at the time, had already come to the surface and I could see it on my skin and I could feel it on my skin. And I was like, “This is not good. We’ve been watching this and this is what’s been happening for two years.” So that is my plea to women to, if you have a gut feeling that it’s not right, get out there and find out for yourself, advocate for yourself.

(00:54):
Lobular carcinoma in two spots. So those were the two spots I had noticed. He came out of the store and I said, “It’s not the news we wanted.” And we kind of fell apart and did our thing right there in the middle of the shopping center. So now’s the time for me to interject. We cried and hugged and very first thing we had to do was call our children. And then all of us cried and hugged and wishes and we’re a faith-based family. And so we prayed to God to give us guidance as to what we were about to experience. And I can honestly tell you, I’ll tell you the end of the story right now. He has fulfilled our faithfulness.

(01:32):
I got on the phone, started calling people that I knew had been through this. I called a very dear friend of a lifelong friend. She said, “I’m going to tell you what you need to do. You need to call Dr. Sullivan in New Orleans.” She had gone to Beverly Hills and had the double mastectomy, but had done the deep flap, which I had never heard of. What is the deep flap? I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what any of this is, what I’m about to do. I’m telling you, I was as in the dark as anybody could ever be. She said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I believe there’s a Dr. Mary Jo Wright who trained with him. And she has just set up an office in McKinney, Texas.” And I was like, “Bingo. Here we go, God. Thank you.”

(02:19):
But we did our due diligence. I got four different consults with four different doctors.

(02:24):
But this doctor was too big. This one was too little. This one was too busy. And then Mary Jo was just right, as the three birds would say. She had us after our first hug. And you feel like with her history and what all she’s done and everything, whenever she says, “We got this, ” you believe her. I can quit worrying. I can just keep doing what I need to be doing, which is praying and she’s got the rest.

(02:57):
And so April 4th of 25, I had a bilateral mastectomy with deep flap reconstruction. It has been a wonderful experience. She took care of everything we needed. This office staff is second to none. They are your friends. They are your family. And we walk in and it’s like, “We’re home. We don’t have to go through 10 different operators to get to the right doctor. We don’t have to do all the things that you know with the bigger hospitals.” And we just felt like we had found our place. I just felt like I was totally taken care of. I did not have a need in the world that God hadn’t supplied these people for me to get me through this. And I would tell anybody, do the deep flap. This surgery has given me hope that I can do hard things. I just feel like God has a purpose for me.

(03:50):
And I feel like if God wanted me to walk through this cancer journey, there is a purpose in that journey. I don’t want to miss anything that he wants me to be able to tell, to tell my story.

(04:02):
There’s not a week that comes that she doesn’t get a telephone call from somebody saying, “Hey, will you talk to my friend because she has just found out that she has cancer?” Because they are scared to death like we were. But Joanie has a way of giving them a calm to know how to be objective about what they need to do. Here’s Mary Jo Wright that does it like this. Here’s basically all the other doctors that do it this way. It’s your choice, but we highly recommend this lady because we have nothing but wonderful things to say about her.

(04:42):
Never for any day have felt like I am a person with cancer. I think she gave me such this positive attitude that we’re going to take care of this and you are not going to live your life under this bail of you are a cancer victim and I’m not going to do it. This is a family. This is not a huge Baylor Southwestern, UT Southwestern, all that where you feel like you’re a number. This center knows your name and their main goal is to make the patient feel loved and cared for. And that’s the way Bill and I have both felt.