After Chicago area man requests second opinion, Northwestern doctors find operable tumor on his pancreas
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Getting a second opinion made all the difference for a River Forest man—who was found to have pancreatic cancer, but is now cancer-free.
Alex Timchak, 47, is a husband and father—and also a doctor himself.
Over the July 4th weekend this past summer, he had a deep cough. While the cough went away, a suspicious pain in his left side did not.
Timchak went to his primary care doctor, who said imaging showed his pancreas was inflamed and his pancreatic duct enlarged, according to Northwestern Medicine.
The primary care doctor referred Timchak to a gastroenterologist at another health system. An endoscopy revealed no mass, and biopsy results came back normal, Northwestern Medicine said.
But the pain persisted, so Timchak turned to Dr. Srinadh Komanduri at the Northwestern Medicine Oak Brook Outpatient Center, where he underwent another biopsy.
Timchak, whose son is in college at the University of Alabama, was sitting in the stands at an Alabama football game when Komanduri called with the results.
Indeed there was a small tumor in Timchak's pancreas, but it turned out to be one that could be removed surgically.
"The reason this is so different is it has a much slower growth rate and doesn't spread to adjacent organs anywhere nearly as quickly as the standard cancer of the pancreas," said Dr. Komanduri.
Timchak had been worried he would end up like his father, who died of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma at 70. He was relieved by the news that his cancer was so treatable.
"I jumped up and pumped my fist and screamed loudly, 'Yes!'" he said, "because I knew that this was a completely different picture than what I was most fearing."
Northwestern Medicine surgical oncologist Dr. David Bentrem met with Timchak, and they agreed a Whipple procedure—in which the head of the pancreas, the first part of the mall intestine, the gallbladder, and a portion of the bile duct are removed—was the best way to go.
Timchak had the surgery successfully on Nov. 14. The tumor had clear margins, and 24 lymph nodes were negative for cancer, Northwestern Medicine said.
Timchak and his doctors agree that anyone facing a critical health issue should get a second opinion.
