Sharing Mayo Clinic - February 2014 Archives

Frances Shaw’s health and career mixed together in a muffin batter. With her perseverance and answers from Mayo Clinic, both her health and career as a baker and entrepreneur, are turning out golden. Frances Shaw didn’t set out to be a baker. Her career essentially found her as she tried to find ways to manage her health and dietary restrictions, while still enjoying food. In her senior year of college, while studying film, Shaw, now 25, suddenly found herself dealing with ongoing stomach and pain symptoms that had worsened dramatically. “I was really, really tired,” she says. And that wasn’t all. “I had bone pain and was instantly bedridden.” Finding out what was wrong was not as instant, however. In fact, it was an odyssey that dragged out for seven years. “I saw every kind of doctor,” she says. Eventually, Shaw learned she had Celiac disease and an intolerance of dairy products. After her diagnosis, Shaw eliminated gluten and dairy from her diet. “I did notice a big difference in how I felt,” she says. “But I was so hungry. It was hard to find the combination of gluten-free, dairy-free that tasted good.”

Most people think that colorectal cancer is just an old man's disease, perhaps because current medical guidelines recommend regular screening begin at the age of 50. Truth is, this disease doesn't discriminate in age, gender or race. Grace De La Rosa was 38 when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer in 2005.  She has no family history of any type of cancer. She's married to a veteran Navy pilot and is a mother of two children, who were 14 and 3 at the time. She was a swimwear model, fitness instructor and fitness competitor. She worked out religiously and ate healthy foods. So that's when De La Rosa was shocked to hear the words, "You have cancer." She had surgery to remove the golf ball-sized tumor from her colon and received chemotherapy for three consecutive days, every other week, for six months.

Written by Erin Mobley, Adult BMT Data Specialist at Mayo Clinic in Florida I wanted to go skiing for my seventh birthday, but instead I celebrated in the hospital with family and friends, and a pediatric oncologist.  Two months earlier, in September 1993, on my first day of first grade, I had gotten sick and had a large amount of blood in my urine. I remember my mom picking me up early from school and taking me to the pediatrician, who promptly sent us to the hospital. Scans revealed a tumor about the size golf ball in my bladder. Using the latest technology available, doctors biopsied the tumor and determined it to be rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft-tissue sarcoma. I had surgery the next day and soon began chemotherapy as an inpatient, using a treatment protocol established by what is now the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), an international organization devoted to childhood and adolescent cancer research. The chemotherapy treatment regimen required me to spend every other week in the hospital. My wish to ski came true in March 1994 thanks to Dreams Come True, a local organization that helps children fighting life-threatening diseases fulfill their dreams. My family and I traveled to Winter Park, Co., where we skied, rode snowmobiles, went tubing and built snowmen! The real joy for me was being able to take a break from treatment and just be a kid. Of course, it gave my parents a vacation, too!

For her first 38 years, Jayne Bushman was a picture of health. But then one morning she woke up with an earache, something she says she'd never before experienced. Her first stop was to see her Family Medicine doctor at Mayo Clinic in Rochester who, unable to pinpoint the exact cause of her pain, sent her to Mayo's Department of Otorhinolaryngology. It was there that after a series of additional tests and examinations, Bushman learned she had much more than and ear infection. The diagnosis was Wegener's granulomatosis, a rare disorder that inflames the blood vessels and restricts blood flow to various internal organs. The ear issues were simply one manifestation of the disease, which often affects the kidneys, lungs and upper respiratory tract. The restricted blood flow caused by the disease can damage these organs. As Bushman listened to doctors explain her diagnosis, she says she felt "shocked." That only got worse after she went home and began using the Internet to research her disease. "The very first thing I did after my diagnosis is what a lot of people do, which is the very wrong thing," she says. "And I now tell any person I meet or talk to online who gets diagnosed with Wegener's disease to stay off the Internet. It'll do nothing but scare you. That's exactly what it did to me." Still, Bushman says she only allowed herself to feel that way for a moment or two. "Initially, it was a huge shock," she says. "But I had three kids at home, I have a career … and I sure as heck wasn't going to let this get in the way of that. I've always tried to not live in my disease and to instead live with my disease.”

If Proud Mary is playing, Sandy Dyson wants to be dancing. But last spring, it looked like Dyson’s dancing days might be behind her. After knee replacement surgery, the 71-year-old Kennebec, S.D., resident was in so much pain that just walking seemed like punishment. Thanks to a “wickedly good team” of rehabilitation specialists in the Mayo Transitional Care program at Mayo Clinic Health System in Waseca, however, she was back on the dance floor by winter. The Transitional Care program provides a step between hospital and home for patients, who are supervised by physicians and receive daily care from nurses and therapists. A multidisciplinary team of providers sets up an individualized plan of care for each patient designed to get them back home as quickly as possible. “Without their help I wouldn’t be where I am today,” says Dyson. When she arrived in Waseca three days after having surgery at Mayo Clinic, Dyson was in “excruciating” pain. She understood that the pain she was experiencing wasn’t unusual immediately after knee replacement surgery, but Dyson was not happy about it. And not shy about letting people know it. But that didn’t scare staff away. Dyson says someone checked on her every 30 minutes the first week she arrived, always meeting her tears and frustration with kindness and encouragement.

Written by Sara Jacobsen Everyone who visits the Mayo Clinic has a story. Though my story may be a lot like all of the other patients who have come and gone through the Mayo Clinic system, I want to share my gratitude for the organization, facility and clinic that Mayo is. The year 2013 proved to be a bit of a roller coaster for me. I started out with bowel and bladder difficulty that ultimately spread to affect my neurological system and breathing. I had seen every specialist and had more tests done than I ever knew were possible. In August, I started worsening. I was having difficulty taking a deep breath in, while having increased right sided weakness, fatigue and numbness. The whole array of diagnoses were thrown at me (ALS, MS, Cancer, Myasthenia Gravis, and everything in between). I was placed on oxygen at night and it was becoming difficult to have enough energy to care for my two young boys (ages 3 and 5). I continued to work as a nurse, but I wasn't as effective as I had been. In October, things continued to worsen. I had to stop running because my right foot was becoming numb, and I had to limit my activity because it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. By the time I decided to come to the Mayo Clinic (the best place in the world for medicine) in November, it was hard for me to drive home at night because of the numbness in my right foot, it was getting difficult to make it through a day of work, and I had no energy for my kids. The quality of life I had was diminishing quickly.

I was diagnosed with eosinophillic esophagitis (EE) by another provider, who said I needed to have my esophagus stretched every six months with a balloon. I decided to get a second opinion at the Esophagus Clinic at the Mayo Clinic. Wow, am I glad I did! At first, I was given a soft steroid, which may the EE go away! Which was great news! However, then Dr. Alexander and his team did some additional testing of my esophagus, and they were able to figure out that my EE (for which I had 10 times the normal amount of eosinophils) was actually caused from eating eggs, peanuts and dairy! Through the great care of Dr. Alexander and his team, not only did I not have to have my esophagus stretched, I did not even need to take medicine!!!!