Sharing Mayo Clinic - April 2011 Archives

By: Andrea Miller Birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, graduation gifts…we’re set in a society that longs after gifts.  I have learned, however, that the most important gift one can receive is a clean bill of health.  I have not had the pleasure of knowing what that is truly like.  I have been sick on and off for the past twenty-two years. I have learned to be content with the day at hand, not knowing what tomorrow may bring.  But through my struggles, trips to the doctor, tumors, surgeries, medication, and the like, I may soon get better, knowing and sharing with others what the gift of good health truly is. Medullablastoma is a very rare and often fatal type of brain cancer.  At age one I was diagnosed with this cancer, having a tumor in my brain the size of an orange.  Living in California at the time, I was taken to the UCLA Medical Center, where the first of two surgeries took place.  The tumor was removed, three weeks later it re-grew; nearly 1/3 of my brain was removed during the second operation. Doctors informed my parents that I had a 10% chance of survival, even then it was likely I would never walk or pass a third grade learning level. Despite my grim outlook, I beat the odds.

“You’re going to love this ride! The scenery is so amazing, you’ll wish you had a camera.” So after hearing that response from two of ...

On Sunday, April 10th, David's health tip video was shown on the main scoreboard during the 8th inning of the Minnesota Twins game. David received ...

When 64-year-old Dennis Nigon struggled for two weeks with a sore throat, he never imagined he would be diagnosed with cancer a few weeks later. Nigon didn’t think anything serious of his sore throat. But as it continued to persist, he decided to go in for tests, and he’s grateful that he did.

Hello: I am Carolyn of Missouri.  I have long been a patient of Mayo Clinic since about 1942 and am still a patient visiting about every 3 months. Sometime after I was born, we moved to Glendale…that is where we lived when I took sick at the age of about 20 months.  The Dr. there treated me for about 3 weeks for a cold and then I guess I took a turn for the worst and one night he sent us on up to Rochester and they performed surgery on me at 3 a.m. in the morning.  Dr. Figi was the Dr. I had for many years while growing up.  Before I was 17 years old, I had had 48 surgeries on my throat for pappillomas of the larnyx and trachea. I had surgery at the Kahler  Hospital (top 3 floors of the Kahler Hotel) until I was 12 at which time the  Kahler hospital was closed and I then went to St. Mary's.

Most people think of Facebook and Twitter as fun, engaging social media sites, used to make friends and connect with those sharing common interests. Kirti D. sheds a new light on the power of social media as she tells us an amazing story of how it led her mother, Anuradha D., to an incredible gift—a second chance to lead a healthy life. In 2002, after suffering from symptoms for years, Anuradha was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. With a kidney function of less than 50 percent, she was given less than seven years to live. Since then, she and her husband have committed themselves to her health and living well. Anuradha has controlled her disease and symptoms through diet, medication, yoga and homeopathy. Despite all of Anuradha’s efforts, by October 2010, her kidney function reached less than 20 percent and she was placed on the transplant waiting list. Unless she found a donor match, she faced a long wait of about six years. Her daughter, Kirti, knew that her mother would not have six years to wait on the transplant list, so she did what she knew best--she turned to social media and started a Facebook page. Kirti started the page to help her mother find a kidney--she provided regular updates and information on organ donation and kidney disease. Even if she did not find a match for her mother, Kirti believed she might be able to help someone else. In January 2011, Kirti posted a link to her mother’s Facebook page on her status update—“Mom is having a particularly hard week, and her situation is getting a little more desperate”. That evening on Twitter, she began receiving tweets from a Twitter follower, Amy D. inquiring about her mother’s health and questioning what they needed regarding a donor match. At the time, Amy and Kirti had been following each other on Twitter for a little over a year and had met at dinner over the summer. Amy tweeted that she was interested in learning more and asked that Kirti call her. She shared that she was a B- blood type (an initial match) and would be interested in seeing if she was a match for her mother. Amy explained, “I have two kidneys, but you only have one mom.”  When Kirti hung up the phone, she said she “cried her eyes out.”