Gastroenterology Patient Stories

Dorylee Baez lives fearlessly. Whether flying down a zip line or organizing a pancreatic cancer patient group in Puerto Rico, she plunges into life with zest. The 31-year-old academic advisor at Universidad del Este in Carolina, Puerto Rico, is known as someone who is tenacious, overcoming whatever obstacles get in her way to achieve and achieve her goals. For instance, Baez attended college while simultaneously working and caring for her ailing mother who was suffering from lupus. After her mother died, Baez pressed on to honor her memory and completed a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in college-level education administration. But then, at 29, Baez learned she had a large tumor in her pancreas. Not the diagnosis she was expecting when she went to the doctor.

Chuck Lewensten ran a successful business, hunted in Africa and played tennis with his fiancé, Jill. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis changed all that. By the summer of 2010, ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6M-lgjL9Vg Sue Willingham remembers the May 2010 day well. She was getting ready to take her two children to school. But before leaving the house, she did what any mom might – use the restroom. But then she noticed she’d lightly soiled her undergarments. Only she didn’t remember it happening. At 45, Willingham was the picture of health. She ate well, exercised and stayed up on doctor visits. But in that moment, something changed. She called her husband. “I remember telling him I’m scared,” she says. But then Willingham, who describes herself as someone who is not easily rattled, tried to rationalize the accident, chalking it up to the six fiber pills she’d taken the day before to combat constipation. “Being one that does not jump to conclusions or get upset or scared of anything easily, I said this is ridiculous, crazy, there is nothing wrong with me. I have no cancer in my family. I have no anything…” But today she admits, “Maybe subconsciously I had been aware of what he had gone through the year before.”

"The sky seems bluer and the air smells fresher," says Ning Chien, after being accurately diagnosed by Mayo doctors with treatable autoimmune pancreatitis, rather than suspected cancer.

In 2007, Kimmy Lockwood decided to be screened for weight-loss surgery to address a longtime weight problem. Little did she know that decision would be lifesaving and eventually lead to a liver transplant at Mayo Clinic. Tests indicated Lockwood had low iron levels. Her local physicians found the reason — a genetic disorder called hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT, also known as Osler-Weber-Rendu disease or syndrome).

Marshall Curtis was diagnosed in 2009 with end stage liver failure and cirrhosis secondary to Alpha1 Antitrypsin deficiency. Obesity and encephalopathy were additional challenges confronting ...

Benny Andújar has traveled a long way from his native Utuado, Puerto Rico, to tell an important story. “Cancer doesn’t always send a warning,” Andújar says ...

Jorge Rivera raised his cell phone and took a self-portrait that showed an almost imperceptible scar on his neck. Rivera, an administrative manager at FirstBank ...

The below article comes from our Sharing Mayo Clinic print publication: At 6 feet 4 inches tall and more than 200 pounds, Brandon Street could easily be described as “big.” In high school, his nickname was “The Big Street.” When this active young man who enjoyed playing sports began to have irregular and difficult bowel movements and occasional blood in his stool, he didn’t worry too much. He thought his diet was to blame. “I tried to hide it in high school. I didn’t want people to know there was a problem,” says Street, a native of Douglas, Ga.

Scott Hennen, a radio talk show host from Fargo, ND, had surgery at Mayo Clinic yesterday to remove his colon, which had developed several sites ...

As a 14-year-old, Ann Strom understandably had knots in her stomach about starting her freshman year of high school. These knots, however, did not go away. Following ...

When I walked into Dr. Sunanda Kane’s office at Mayo Clinic, I was crying. I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease not long before, and ...