CentraState - Healthy Directions

Jim Tedesco doesn't remember all of the details from his battle with childhood thyroid cancer in 1956. He knows he spent nearly a year in a Newark hospital and that he had surgery to remove his thyroid gland, several lymph nodes in his chest and one of his vocal chords. He recalls going through rehabilitation to relearn how to talk and to regain his strength. What the 71-year-old Belmar man remembers most, however, is his attitude toward battling the disease. In those days, the chances of surviving his type of cancer were only about one in four, he says. "You gotta fight," says Jim, now a grandfather of three. "It's the only way you're going to beat cancer." He says that fighting spirit served him well throughout his life, and "you gotta fight" once again became his mantra in the spring of 2014, when he confronted cancer for a second time. A WARNING SIGN After noticing blood in his stool in March 2014, Jim went to see Colin Brown, MD, a board-certified gastroenterologist on staff at CentraState Medical Center. Dr. Brown performed a colonoscopy and discovered an approximately 5-centimeter tumor on the left side of Jim's colon. A biopsy confirmed it was colon cancer. "I couldn't believe it," says Jim, who is retired from a career in public service but serves as a commissioner on the Belmar Housing Authority. "I beat it when I was young, and I would never have thought that I would have to deal with it again." Dr. Brown says a CT scan showed the tumor appeared to be contained to the colon and had not spread. That made Jim a candidate for colon surgery—a potential cure for his disease. "He's fortunate in the sense that the bleeding gave him a sign that something was wrong," Dr. Brown says. "Colon cancers often don't present symptoms until they're so big they obstruct the colon or a patient bleeds so much he or she becomes anemic. At that point, it can be more difficult to treat." A STATE-OF-THE-ART SURGERY On April 3, 2014, Jim underwent surgery to have an approximately 1-foot section of his colon removed. The procedure was performed by board-certified colorectal surgeon Thomas Kayal, MD, using CentraState's da Vinci ® Surgical System, also known as a robotic surgery system. Colin Brown, MD board-certified gastroenterologist Thomas Kayal, MD board-certified colorectal surgeon for a Second Time … SURVIVING CANCER M O R E T H A N 5 0 Y E A R S L AT E R Jim Tedesco can look toward the future with hope thanks to his successful colorectal cancer treatment at CentraState. Summer 2015 Healthy Directions 6

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