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as told by Dr. Kenneth Kolb  As a pediatrician at the Gundersen Lutheran - Onalaska Clinic, I’ve always known this organization provides high-quality patient care. But, as a patient, I’ve discovered that it’s not just the care that makes Gundersen Lutheran a special place...it’s the caring.
My story begins in the summer of 2004. That’s when a lesion first appeared on my cheek. As doctors, we’re taught about the ABCDs of skin cancer, and none of those applied to this spot. Just to be safe, I went to my dermatologist anyway. I got news I wasn’t expecting—the spot was melanoma.
Unlike many types of cancer, there are not a lot of good treatments for melanoma. Gundersen Lutheran plastic surgeons Dr. Mark Connelly and Dr. Joseph Benacci have spent countless hours with me in the operating room. But, each time they removed the cancer, it would return. After my last surgery in 2005, drug therapy at Gundersen Lutheran and an experimental vaccine trial on the east coast, I seemed to be doing well. But, during a followup PET scan in September 2006, I received a major blow. The disease had spread to my lungs and spine.
 After treating the tumors in my back with stereotactic radiosurgery, Gundersen Lutheran oncologist Dr. Leah Dietrich and I discussed my options and we felt my best hope for beating this once and for all was an experimental gene therapy treatment at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When I traveled to the NIH for tests just before the new year, an MRI showed three more lesions on my brain. This, unfortunately, took me out of the NIH trial. I returned home to Gundersen Lutheran and formed a plan with Dr. Deitrich and radiation oncologist Dr. Patrick Conway for more stereotactic radiosurgery, total brain radiation and chemotherapy, and I still hope to get in the NIH trial at some point.
While my treatment has had many ups and downs, one thing has remained consistent—the level of caring from every person I’ve encountered at Gundersen Lutheran. The doctors, nurses, radiation technologists and everyone else involved in my care have given me hope. My experience can be summed up well by something Dr. Connelly said to me: “There can be a limit to medical care, but there’s no limit to caring.” That’s definitely true at Gundersen Lutheran. |