COLLABORATION | with caregivers and patients to create healthier lives
It was during a family trip to
Colorado to attend her then 16-yearold daughter Bekah’s softball
tournament that the Belton resident
got the news. “On July 2, I received
a phone call from Scott & White,
telling me I had breast cancer. I asked
what kind, and then hung up the
phone,” Mrs. Alcozer recalls. After
she shared the news with her family,
she began to research more about the
disease. She would exhibit that same
kind of determination throughout the
treatment of the commonly occurring
type of breast cancer she was diagnosed
with, invasive ductal carcinoma.
was diagnosed, and one of the first
things she did was tell the school
principal that her son was in for a
difficult year. The school assigned him
to a class taught by a breast cancer
survivor. “That was the best thing that
could have happened to him,” Mrs.
Alcozer says. “Seeing his teacher every
day, knowing she went through the
same thing his mother did helped him
through the process.”
In late August, Dr. Dauway
pe