Making Rounds
For Bladen County patients, great surgical care is right around the corner
When it’s time to have surgery, the last thing you want is a long drive to get there and back. But for many rural Americans, access to a great surgeon and hospital can mean hours on the road.
That’s not the case in beautiful Bladen County. As a federally designated critical access hospital, Cape Fear Valley Bladen County Hospital is focused on providing high-quality health services in the peaceful region between Fayetteville and Wilmington. Emergency services, inpatient care, even diagnostic technology like MRI are all available without a long drive into a city—and so is general surgery.
“It’s a very valuable thing to have a good hospital that close by,” said Allen Davis. “It saves a lot of time and aggravation.”
Three years ago, Davis had a swollen lymph node in his groin that had grown too uncomfortable to ignore. Barry Williamson, MD, a board-certified general surgeon, performed the surgery to remove it for a biopsy.
“That’s when we found out it was lymphoma,” said Davis. “I was relieved to have the surgery over with, but it turned out that was just the beginning.”
He spent the next several months receiving chemotherapy, which required a port to be surgically placed in his chest. For that procedure, and the removal months later, he was glad to be in Dr. Williamson’s care again.
“He’s very easy to talk to,” Davis said. “He understands what you’re trying to tell him and he explains everything really well. He’s more like a country doctor than a lot of surgeons you meet.”
With his scans no longer showing anything of concern, Davis is happy to have that experience behind him. But he’s also grateful to live just 12 minutes from the hospital, and not only because of the short drive.
“The nurses and everybody there are so nice to us,” he said. “They know us by name. It really has kind of a hometown feeling to it.”
A similar experience brought Annie Barbour to Dr. Williamson’s care. It started with a bothersome lump in her neck.
“I had always been a little scared of doctors,” she said, “so I ignored it for longer than I should have.”
When she finally saw her doctor, Barbour learned that it was a severely swollen lymph node and she’d need to have surgery to investigate. This was not great news, given her already heightened anxiety, but she said meeting Dr. Williamson quickly put her at ease.
“He was happy to answer every question,” she said. “I was just a ball of nerves, but he explained everything so calmly.”
Dr. Williamson was also the one to tell Barbour, days after the surgery, that the biopsy showed she had lymphoma.
“Obviously, I broke down in tears,” she said. “But he said, ‘This is just one step toward figuring out how to help you, and it’s done.’ It really helped me feel like everything’s going to be OK. Just a few more steps. I can do this.”
The next step was a six-month course of chemotherapy. For Barbour, the worst part was having to leave her job as a pre-K teacher.
“I just couldn’t work around children during all of that,” she said, “because I would end up catching every cold, every stomach bug. I just love seeing their little faces, and watching them grow. So that was hard, having to leave that.”
Now 25 and cancer-free, Barbour is back in the classroom with her preschoolers. And while she hopes not to see another serious health issue for a long time, she is grateful to Dr. Williamson for making that tough experience a little easier.
“He was just so comforting when I was really scared,” she said, “and that was exactly what I needed.”
For more information on Cape Fear Valley surgical services, visit capefearvalley.com/services/surgical-services.
