Dr. Horacio Asbun
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, and Mayo Clinic Cancer Center experts are available to discuss this [...]
An avid runner, Judi Zitiello, 66, was forced into a six-week hiatus when she developed a meniscus tear in early 2014. The retired financial executive was always active – exercising, hosting dinner parties, and volunteering to run the JT Townsend Foundation, a Jacksonville, Florida, philanthropic organization. Judi wasn’t too concerned about the downtime at first. She knew her body would take time to heal. But the pain lingered. Then Judi began losing weight and her energy waned.
With no cure available, a Mayo patient finds comfort in a reunion with a former teacher whose words and encouragement had a lasting impact on his life. With some help from his Mayo physician. Tim Ruettiger, a gym teacher and wrestling coach in New Lennox, Ill., had no idea what a lasting impression he had made on one of his students, Ron Krasneck. In 1982, Krasneck was 14 years old when he first met Ruettiger, known as Coach Rudy. Krasneck was slightly built, standing just 4 feet, 6 inches tall. Born with a rare genetic condition linked to cancer, the teenager had undergone multiple orthopedic surgeries to treat bone cancer. But Coach Rudy treated Krasneck just like the rest of the students. Thirty years later, Mayo's Horacio Asbun, M.D., a surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Florida, learned about Coach Rudy's impact during a conversation back in December 2012, after Krasneck learned that surgery couldn’t cure his advanced gall bladder and liver cancer. “I couldn’t do anything for him,” says Dr. Asbun, who knew much of Krasneck’s medical journey. Diagnosed as a toddler, his disease ramped up in his late teens. At age 46, Krasneck had survived nine episodes of bone cancer, amputations of a hand and wrist, partial removal of a shoulder/scapula and removal and rebuilding of C2 and C3 vertebrae. He walked with a prosthetic leg, though it was hardly noticeable. He'd had more than 35 major surgeries.
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — 29 de mayo de 2013. Dorylee Baez-Nieves vive sin miedos. Ya sea volando por el dosel de un bosque en tirolesa (zip [...]
Mindy Cahn is living proof that pancreatic cancer can be beat. The odds can be daunting. According to the National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate for localized pancreatic cancer is 21 percent. For cancer that has spread, the survival rate is about 9 percent. Cahn, 60, had been diagnosed with a softball-sized cyst on her pancreas 20 years ago. Told it was benign, the West Palm Beach, Fla., mother of three didn’t worry about it.
