Patient Stories

Fighting Peripheral Artery Disease One Step at a Time

Lede:
After more than 30 years of smoking, Jean Martin of Manalapan, New Jersey, decided to trade her cigarettes for a pair of running shoes. At age 51, she worked up slowly from a brisk walk to jogging and started feeling pretty good. Then one day her calves began to cramp. When the pain became severe, Jean went to a local hospital and was diagnosed with peripheral artery disease (PAD), a condition that had affected her father. PAD is a narrowing of the arteries carrying blood to the limbs. Smokers are up to 25 times more likely to develop it. Jean had the right idea—quitting—she just didn’t do it soon enough.

Minimally Invasive Fix for a Complex Aneurysm

Lede:
Jerry Del Colliano, media executive, author, and disk jockey, is a member of the boomer generation who stays fit working out at his homes in Arizona and New Jersey. Earlier this year, he was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm, an enlargement of the main artery that takes blood from the heart to the rest of the body. This condition usually causes no symptoms until it ruptures or tears and becomes life threatening.

Stories of Hope: David Paffenroth

Lede:
In the fall of 2014, Dave began to lose weight. Being diagnosed a few years earlier with Diabetes II, at first he thought it was part of the disease. However, other symptoms started to appear — pain under his rib cage, losing more weight, change in stools, etc. An appointment to the primary doctor in October had Dave and his wife, Wendy, asking a lot of questions. After seeing doctor after doctor, Dave and Wendy finally arrived at the Pancreas Center, for successful diagnosis and treatment of Dave's pancreatic cancer.