Doris Cox's Story from Stephen Townsend on Vimeo. (Length: 4:31)

Doris Cox knew she needed help when she developed a cough that wouldn't go away in January 2003. The 51-year-old wife, mother and grandmother soon began to cough up blood, so naturally she went to the doctors in Crossville, her hometown.

The doctors didn't know what was wrong, she says. At first they diagnosed her with acid reflux, then they said it was her sinuses. Some told her she was just coughing too hard and was probably bursting blood vessels.

"I was so personally disgusted with everybody around here trying to get diagnosed," she says. "I kept telling them something was wrong, I'm normally a healthy person... and I went to this one doctor up here and after seeing to me to you know, ear, nose and throat and all this stuff, he looks over to me and says 'What do you want me to do?' And I'm looking at him like, 'Well you're the doctor, you tell me what to do.'"

I was so personally disgusted with everybody around here trying to get diagnosed.
-Doris Cox on her original diagnoses

This rigmarole went on for eight months until one August night when Doris had to go to the emergency room for coughing up blood.

"There was one doctor that was on-call," Doris says, "and he said, 'Well let me ask you something - why did you come here?' And I said well, to try to get answers for why I'm coughing up blood. And he said, 'Well, here it is, it's midnight, I'm not a pulmonologist, and I'm not going to call in a pulmonologist,' and all this stuff like I was really bothering them to even show up there."

The next day Doris was diagnosed with lung cancer by a pulmonologist, or lung care specialist. She had never smoked a day in her life.

"I think me being a non-smoker really worked against me," she says. "You know, because, I was forty-five, and I think they just kind of brushed it off being a non-smoker and all that, that it couldn't be that." A brochure that Doris picked up said cancer patients from the time they're diagnosed usually only have a 15 percent chance to survive for five years.  

Doris knew the pulmonologist sent her patients to the same hospital she had been the previous night, so she asked if there was anywhere else, and the doctor suggested the UT Medical Center. It's a bit of a drive - about 168 miles roundtrip, she says - but "it's worth every mile."

Doris's radiation oncologist at the UT Medical Center is Dr. Robert Bertoli. Along with other members of the medical center staff, he has helped Doris overcome her lung cancer the four separate times it's come back.

Just recently Doris honored him as her guardian angel as part of the medical center's "Guardian Angel Program." He was the 100th recipient of the gift. Bertoli goes above and beyond, Doris says, to the point that he'll stay at the hospital late and call at night if he finds out anything new, whether it's good or bad. But it's the center as whole, she says, that makes the entire experience so special.

I see people that have it so much worse than me. Like these little kids that get cancer, they don't deserve it.
-Doris Cox

"They're just a family-oriented type," she says. "I've got such good care from everybody up there, like I said, it's not just him, it's the nurses, the receptionists. Like the other day, a receptionist where I do my chemo treatments, I told her, 'Well the medicine's working,' and she cries. And she hugs me and she's like 'Give me high-five!' That's caring. They cry with you, they high-five...it's a team."

This past September marks five years and one month since Doris's initial diagnosis. She beat the 15 percent odds.

"I told my husband, I was like, five years today, I've made the five years," she says. "I've beat the odds so far. I'm showing cancer, I'm beating it!"

She says she misses doing some of the simple things many of us take for granted such as planting flowers and cleaning the house. With only one lung, she must pace herself even in the most basic of tasks such as vacuuming.

"You just have to be appreciative of the things you can still do and not worry about the things you can't do anymore," she says. "But you know, I can still do things. It could be so much worse. And I have to look at things like that, too. I know I've had things taken away from me that I can no longer do, but it could be worse. Because I see people that have it so much worse than me. Like these little kids that get cancer, they don't deserve it. They've just begun to live. I've lived 51 years, I have kids, I've got grandkids, and I feel very fortunate that I can still do things that I can do."

Doris says she's more or less turned her life over to God and her doctors, to whom she owes her life. She's beaten the odds four times and shows no signs of stopping the fight.

"I'm still here thanks to UT," she says.