LAWTON, Okla. – The Cancer Centers of Southwest Oklahoma recently welcomed a new radiation oncologist. Dr. Rufus Mark is a native Californian, but he’s worked in Texas for roughly the last 20 years before deciding to move to Lawton.
One of the factors that played into him moving is time. It’s important to him whether it’s cutting how much time he spends sitting in traffic every day or trying to cure someone of cancer to give them more time here on this earth, so he wants to make the most of the time he has.
“I’m on the planet to cure as many people as I can,” he said. “That’s what makes me tick, and that’s why I came.”
He said he was impressed with the opportunities available at the Cancer Centers of Southwest Oklahoma.
“The technologies that are at the top of what we do in radiation oncology today are SBRT, that stands for stereotactic body radiation therapy, which permits you to deliver a very high dose of radiation to a target while reducing the radiation to normal surrounding tissues,” Dr. Mark said. “Do we have SBRT here? Sure do. And there’s another one called stereotactic radiosurgery. The same idea only it’s applied for use in the brain. So stereotactic radiosurgery, abbreviation SRS. Do we have SRS here? Sure do.”
But it wasn’t just the value of time and technology that brought him to the center.
“You have an outstanding group of people including the doctor next door to me here, Dr. Michael Kerley who is a former president of the American College of Radiation Oncology, so that tells you how good the people are here,” he said.
Dr. Mark said he’s taking care of almost three times the number of patients that he took care of at his last job and can do more. His message for people who live in southwest Oklahoma is this.
“As hard as this might be, try not to fear the word cancer,” Dr. Mark said. “It’s much better to go after it. He says most the time you can hit a home run in this day and age between the actual treatment of the cancer site itself and treating beyond the cancer.”
He said there’s no need for people to travel hours to get cancer treatment when they can go to the Cancer Centers of Southwest Oklahoma.
