The night before his cancer surgery in April 2011, Michael McGhee asked his church family to pray for him. “I laid my cigarettes on the altar and didn’t pick them up again,” McGhee said. Eight years later, McGhee is 72 and has survived not one, but two, cancers that are often deadly: esophageal cancer and…
Linda Reins, 73, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is no stranger to cancer. In 1985, when she was 40, her local gynecologist’s office floored her with the first diagnosis. “They told me, ‘You’re pregnant and oh, you also have cervical cancer,’ said Reins, who had two teenaged sons at the time. “The next day, my husband at…
Frits van Rhee, clinical director of the UAMS Myeloma Center, weighed in on a new combination therapy for treating newly diagnosed Castleman disease patients in the April 18 issue of Blood, a publication by the American Society of Hematology. In the commentary, “Storming the Castle with TCP,” van Rhee and coauthor Katie Stone, then-director of…
Michèle Perry, 57, is a talented athlete who is happiest when she is moving. From softball to swimming, Perry is not afraid to take on something new. In September 2015, she started playing tennis and discovered she was quite good. The following year, when she noticed pain in her leg while doing certain exercises, she…
May 13, 2019 | Timothy Raines didn’t have any rehabilitation or physical therapy after experiencing a stroke. Instead, after UAMS treated his stroke, he turned to bowling for his recovery.
When Cole Benjamin Bratton was born in January, he was screaming at the top of his lungs. That is exactly what his parents hoped he would do. Married in 2008, Laci and Rickie Bratton knew they wanted to be parents. After two years of trying and no pregnancy, they decided to see a fertility specialist….
A Facebook friendship that formed over an illness in common proved lifesaving for a Florida man who found what he needed at the UAMS Myeloma Center. Myeloma Center patient Gail Naimo of Port St. Lucie, Fla. met fellow Floridians Sergio Pinango, 56, and his wife, Blanca Nieto, 50, on a myeloma Facebook page five years…
Barrett McAlister hopes an ongoing clinical trial at UAMS can help establish a new treatment for Tourette syndrome in children so they can focus on being kids, playing and learning, without worrying about being “different.” “If they’ve got a chance at a normal life, I say take it,” McAlister said. “Take it with both hands.”…
Last fall, just getting out of a chair and walking from one room to the next was a labored and painful experience for Denise Frerichs. The pain was excruciating and it ran down from her back to her legs. “The pain started about two years ago. At first I thought it would get better. I…
When a doctor told Lowetta Bishop she had colorectal cancer, she told him he was wrong. “I’d gone to my family doctor for a regular visit, I told him I’d experienced bleeding, but not often. We both agreed it was probably hemorrhoids,” Bishop said. “We scheduled a colonoscopy and the doctor there told me it…