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New beginnings

 


Stories by Carolyn Milazzo

The new year offers the hope of new beginnings and a fresh start for all of us.

But for the six people featured on the following pages, it’s an especially poignant time. Each is experiencing the start of a new year that might not have arrived without the sophisticated care they received at the Hospital of Saint Raphael. One suffered a near-fatal motorcycle accident; another an aggressive, devastating cancer; and another an at-first unrecognized heart attack. You’ll also meet New Haven parents who struggled with infertility, a stillborn baby and an incompetent cervix; a Hamden mother and son who developed the same type of brain tumor; and a local school administrator who suffered such severe arthritis that he needed both knees and a hip replaced.

Their medical conditions are diverse. Yet as you’ll read, they all faced their conditions with courage, dignity and an unfailing will to survive — in some cases, surprising even their doctors with their determination to get this second chance.

Peter DeBona
Aggressive brain cancer

Branford resident Peter DeBona had just given a routine business presentation and was driving back to work in April 1994, when he reached a stop sign and was literally stopped in his tracks.

A hard-driving businessman who had made this trip countless times, DeBona sat at the stop sign in a state of utter confusion, unable to decide which way to turn.

When his confusion finally lifted — DeBona doesn’t know if he sat at the stop sign for 30 seconds or an hour — he chalked it up to inhaling too many paint fumes while working on his boat the previous weekend.

Though he brushed off the incident, his girlfriend Diane, who works in Saint Raphael’s Occupational Health Plus office, urged him to immediately go the hospital.

He did.

And later that day, a neurologist told him the likely cause of his confusion was a brain tumor.

A brain scan confirmed the diagnosis: a grade 4 tumor (meaning advanced) that was the size of a robin’s egg in the left frontal lobe. Doctors told him it was likely a glioblastoma multiforme — the fastest-growing, deadliest type of brain cancer.

Glioblastoma multiformes are among the most common brain tumors in adults, made up of “very malignant” cells that quickly invade nearby tissue, says the National Brain Tumor Foundation. Surgery followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy is most often prescribed.

But even with treatments, the odds were that DeBona’d survive no more than six months.

“It frightened the hell out of me. I was in a state of shock,” says DeBona, then 51. “I heard the words ‘brain tumor.’ But I don’t think I heard anything else after that. I had never been in a hospital before. I didn’t know anyone who was really sick, and I definitely didn’t know anyone who had ever had a brain tumor.”

Though advised the tumor should be removed immediately, DeBona opted to delay the surgery for a few weeks because he wasn’t sure if he would survive the operation — or if he did survive, if he would be mentally or physically impaired.

Facing these grim possibilities, DeBona wanted to do his best to “wrap up his obligations.” He drew up a will, married Diane and served as best man at his son’s wedding.

“The doctors allowed me to delay the surgery for a few weeks if I promised to take steroids to keep the brain swelling down and an anti-seizure medication,” DeBona recalls. “My body was blowing up like a balloon from the medications, and I was a mess. But I knew I had to get through it for my son, especially.”

By the time DeBona was admitted to Saint Raphael’s for surgery almost three weeks later, he was a physical and mental wreck. Wracked with anxiety and unable to sleep, he asked doctors to sedate him immediately. “At that point, I didn’t want to hear anything they had to say. I just wanted the surgery to be over,” says DeBona, remembering a surgeon entering the operating room with “a birdcage-like contraption that would hold my head still during the procedure.”

When he woke up more than five hours later, doctors told him that they believed they removed all visible parts of the tumor. However, radiation treatments would be needed to attack malignant cells that might be hidden, or had broken off and spread. Chemotherapy was recommended, as well.

The news deflated DeBona: “The whole thing made me angry,” he remembers. “I thought, ‘I’m feeling better. I don’t need any of this stuff.’ ”

But DeBona agreed to the treatment and underwent seven weeks of radiation, followed by 36 weeks of chemotherapy.

“By the time I ended all this, I had out-lived doctors’ predictions. Why? I don’t know,” says DeBona, now 60. “Something got into me. I focused so much on keeping myself up and positive during the treatment process that I ended up forgetting about the tumor.”

Rather than dwell on his illness, DeBona says he kept himself occupied. He bought a computer and became a regular in Internet cancer chat rooms and proficient at computer games to keep his mind as sharp as possible. He also began volunteering at Saint Raphael’s Father Michael J. McGivney Center for Cancer Care, providing support to others with cancer.

“It was a very emotional time,” says DeBona, whose eyes well with tears as he recalls the ordeal. “I spent a lot of time with people with cancer – people like me. Our diseases were different, but we all had our scars. Some of us mixed up our words or walked or talked funny because of treatment, but we all laughed.”

DeBona, who was a lapsed Roman Catholic before his illness, also found himself turning to his faith for strength. He began praying every morning and night, which he says relaxed him, and helped keep him strong through treatments. Defying doctors’ predictions, he also found himself thrilled to wake up each day – and wondering if he would get the chance to wake up the next day, too.

“It really helped to pray and talk with God,” says DeBona. “Faced with my prognosis, it was an outlet that helped me go out and face life, and do what I had to do. All my life I had planned to have a wonderful retirement boating, living in a dream house that I would build myself. What I learned through this experience, though, is that material things don’t bring you happiness — they only make you want more things.”

With this mindset, he quit his big company job, deciding to instead spend his time helping cancer patients like himself, as well as others in need. Today, he spends one day a week as a Saint Raphael volunteer; serves as president of the Branford Food Council; delivers food to needy and homebound Shoreline area residents; and mans hotlines for three national brain tumor organizations.

Because of the nature of glioblastoma tumors, DeBona will be never be cured of cancer. “The cells tend to infiltrate the brain – hide sometimes and sit stagnant. But there is no such thing as being in remission with this type of cancer. So as my doctors say, it’s not a case of IF the cancer will come back, but WHEN. I still have a hard time accepting this. But I’ve learned to live with it.”

DeBona today also suffers from short-term memory problems, and says he often has trouble processing information, sometimes needing instructions or general statements repeated several times. In groups, he’s also unable to listen to more than one person at a time.

Despite this, Saint Raphael Hematology/Oncology section chief Bruce Lundberg, M.D., who sees DeBona every six months, says he is continually impressed by DeBona’s response to his illness and its long-term effect on his life.

“I think Peter had – and still has — as strong a positive attitude as anyone can have,” says Lundberg, who’s board-certified in hematology/oncology. “He worked very hard during the treatments and has a very strong faith belief system. But the most remarkable thing about him is the changes he’s made since his treatment. He’s a man who has readjusted and realigned his life in reaction to what he went through. He’s made the best of his situation and made a commitment to helping others. His life has also given hope to a lot of other people.”

Though he’s so far defied medical odds and survived, DeBona says he’s certain his life is richer for having gone through his ordeal.

“When I worked, I was satisfied with making money. But now my life is truly fulfilled,” he says. “When my cancer comes back, and it’s my time to die, I’ll be ready to go. I’m already so far ahead of where I should have been.”

Robin Curcio
Incompetent cervix

Robin and Mark Curcio dreamed of having a house full of children. And today, their lives are rich and busy with son Max, 4, and daughter Samantha, 5 months.

But as recently as the fall of 2001, the Curcios had resigned themselves to the fact that they would probably only have one child: Max, who was conceived after four years of unsuccessful infertility treatments, and then born almost a month premature.

But as they now know, few things in life are certain. “And the things you most wish for happen when you least expect them – often in very unexpected ways,” says Mark. “Our lives and children are wonderful. But getting them was an emotional roller coaster ride.”
The Curcios, who live in New Haven, began trying to have children when Robin was 34. When fertility drugs didn’t work, they decided to take a year off and then try more treatments. It was during this time that their son Max was conceived.

Though Robin’s pregnancy with Max went smoothly, her water broke prematurely at 33 weeks. (A baby born between 36 and 40 weeks is considered full term.) She spent eight days in the hospital before Max was delivered at 34 weeks. He weighed a hefty 5 pounds, 9 ounces, and was dubbed the “king of the premies” by her doctor. Yet, seeing Max in intensive care for 11 days after his birth was heart-wrenching. “There were tubes all over his body. It was really overwhelming,” she says. “I had never had a child before and was wondering if he was going to live.”

When they were all finally home from the hospital, Mark and Robin enjoyed every minute with baby Max. Then a year later, Robin learned she was pregnant again — a delightful surprise that ended at 20 weeks when her cervix prematurely opened.
Robin was rushed to Saint Raphael’s. And since the baby still had a heartbeat, doctors attempted to stitch close her cervix. But the baby had dropped too far into the birth canal, and too much amniotic fluid had been lost, for the baby to be saved. She and her husband were so devastated by the experience, she remembers, that they resigned themselves to having just one child.

But Robin got another surprise in fall 2001. Feeling tired and sluggish, she went to her doctor to check whether she was in the early stages of menopause – and was stunned to learn she was pregnant again.

Given her medical history, Robin’s doctors immediately performed an ultrasound that showed an incompetent cervix: a condition that causes the opening of the uterus (cervix) to open too early during pregnancy. For this baby to be born healthy and her pregnancy to go full term, she would need to spend most of nine months on complete bed rest.

To help keep her on her feet as long as possible, Robin had her cervix stitched closed — a procedure called cervical cerclage — at week 13 of her pregnancy.

After a week of rest, she returned to her job as a second grade teacher at Church Street School in Hamden, where she taught seated in a chair.

But just five weeks later, an ultrasound showed the stitch was weakening. Robin was told to go home and stay off her feet until the baby was born – an event roughly 18 weeks away.

“Doctor appointments were my big and only outing. Other than that, I basically sat in my living room recliner all day and all night,” Robin recalls. “I was allowed to shower for 10 minutes and get lunch for myself if no one was home. But that was it.”

That commitment to following doctor’s orders was an essential part of Robin successfully carrying her baby to term, says Antonio Asis, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist at Saint Raphael’s.

Robin, 42, says both her family and Mark’s were fantastic, picking up Max in the morning and taking care of him until 4 p.m. every day, which allowed Mark to continue both work and a degree at Southern Connecticut State University. Family and friends also helped Mark maintain the household, pitching in with cooking or cleaning, or visiting Robin to keep her spirits up.

Robin says she busied herself by going on the Internet, watching TV, reading and assembling photo albums. She also came up with lists of chores for Mark.

Though she admits she was gripped by fear that something would happen to the baby, and moments of self-pity when she heard things other people were doing, Robin says she was determined to do everything in her power to give birth to Samantha.

“When you sit like I did, you’re forced to look at life and take it all a little slower,” Robin says. “You appreciate the little things, and things that used to bother you don’t seem as important. There is so much to be said for being patient.”

Though still worried about the baby, Robin says her anxiety lessened somewhat after week 34 of her pregnancy, when she knew the baby could survive outside the womb.

Reaching that milestone, she made one quick trip to a pharmacy “and it was like visiting the Taj Mahal. I just wanted to stay and look at everything,” Robin says.

Two weeks later, Robin’s patience, dedication and determination were rewarded.
At week 36 and full term, Robin felt the baby dropping. The stitch in her cervix was cut, labor was induced and a few hours later, Samantha was born at a healthy 6 pounds, 3 ounces, and measured 19 inches long.

“I have a firm belief that I was given this baby for a reason, and that God doesn’t give anyone anything they can’t handle,” Robin says. “To come home from the hospital with a baby in my arms — to a house packed with all our family and friends — was an incredible feeling.

“During the pregnancy, I was so scared. But I would think, ‘I have so much to be thankful for.’ I feel that way today, too.”

Mark Woll
Severe trauma

After surviving several motorcycle accidents, Mark Woll knew the importance of safety gear.

But something “got into him” on a hot summer day in August 2001. Faced with oppressive heat and making only a quick trip from downtown New Haven to Woodbridge, Woll decided to jump on his motorcycle without the thick leather pants, jacket and boots – “my armor,” he recalls – that he would normally wear to help protect his body. He only wore his helmet.

Woll, 31, who was then the executive chef at Tibwin’s Grill in New Haven, had been looking forward to the trip for months. As part of a charity auction, a Woodbridge woman had bid $2,500 to have Woll cook a dinner for about eight people in her home.

Woll hopped onto his CVRR 900 motorcycle to go over proposed menus with the woman. He was a few minutes into his journey, cruising down Route 34 in New Haven, when a car cut in front of him, making a left turn onto Central Avenue.

With only seconds to react, Woll says he tried to go around the front of the car. This way if he crashed, he would avoid oncoming traffic.

But Woll couldn’t avoid the car, and his motorcycle struck its right quarter panel, hurtling him 20 feet into the air. He landed on a chain-link fence, somehow managing to avoid a huge tree, several utility poles, signs and other vehicles. The force of the impact cracked his helmet in half.

“It was an act of God that I hit the fence. It broke my fall and kept me alive,” Woll says.

Still, the crash left Woll, a married father of two young children from Guilford, with massive internal injuries. In fact, his injuries were so severe that for weeks, his doctors did not know if he would survive.

“It was by far the worst traumatic injury to the lungs that I have ever seen,” says John A. Bonadies, M.D., director of trauma and surgical intensive care at the Hospital of Saint Raphael. “He was so sick and so severely injured from the start. But I knew he could survive if we could just get his lungs better.”

Woll’s injuries included:
• Several broken ribs, with a hole the size of a lemon in his right lung and several smaller holes in his left lung. The lung damage created large cavities that became badly infected.
• A compound fracture of his left leg. It was such a bad break that the bone protruded through the back of his calf.
• A gaping hole in his abdomen where the handlebars entered his body.
• Pneumonia and high fevers — serious complications from his lung damage that would ultimately prove to be the biggest obstacles to his recovery.

After the crash, Woll was rushed to Saint Raphael’s, where he underwent seven hours of surgery performed by Bonadies, a board-certified trauma surgeon, and the trauma team.

A metal rod and pins were inserted into his left leg by orthopedic surgeon Jeffrey Sumner, M.D.; a breathing tube was placed into his throat; 12 tubes were inserted into his lungs; and surgeons stitched his battered body.

After the surgery, his wife Lori was told Woll’s condition was touch and go, but that he might survive because he had youth on his side.

But Woll’s recovery was long and harrowing, due mainly to fevers that ran as high as 105 degrees, drenching him in sweat and causing him to hallucinate.

Faced with what he calls “the worst lung trauma case” of his career, Bonadies tried different things to control the fluid build-up in Woll’s lungs: He placed Woll on a special automated bed that rotated his body throughout the day, and then flipped him from back to stomach. Woll was also heavily sedated and his muscles intentionally paralyzed for several weeks, Bonadies says, because the slightest chest movement could have jeopardized his recovery.

Woll refers to this part of his recovery as a “medical coma.” Though asleep from sedatives, Woll says he remembers four terrifying dreams during that time, all of which involved him or loved ones near death.

The only happy dream occurred shortly before he came out of this “coma” — he was on a Caribbean beach, eating fresh fruit and listening to Bob Marley.

Still, the fevers remained and doctors decided to try one last procedure. They removed his gallbladder, which had become diseased, and tried several different antibiotics to fight the infection.

Woll’s fever finally broke, and he emerged from heavy sedation about six weeks later with no recollection of the accident. But the road to recovery was long, filled with physical and emotional hurdles.

Woll lost 50 pounds in the hospital and remains weak and prone to fatigue, saying he lost 50 percent of his stamina due to his injuries. He also lost 90 percent of the feeling in the lower half of his left leg and foot, has a dislocated thumb, and bone chips and chronic pain in both shoulders — a result of fracturing both collarbones.

But Woll isn’t one to dwell on his pain. Last fall, he opened a small take-out restaurant and store, Gastronomique on High Street in New Haven, which specializes in organic juices and take-out meals. And he counts his blessings every day, saying he’s no longer rattled by the little things in life.

“I will never get on a motorcycle again in my life, and I strongly encourage my loved ones not to either,” Woll says. “You don’t know what you have in life until it is almost gone. God’s given me a second chance at life, and I’m not going to jeopardize it again.

“Whenever something starts to bother me, I look back on what I’ve been through and it alleviates everything. This has made me appreciate life in another way.”

Lynn Pimenta
Heart attack

Lynn Pimenta hadn’t been feeling well all week, but didn’t think much of it until sharp pains woke her one night in March 2001.

A busy businesswoman with a fast-paced work schedule and a flurry of volunteer commitments, Pimenta tossed and turned for most the night, wondering when the pain and discomfort in her chest would end.

But by 7 a.m., Pimenta had a burning in her chest that stretched around her back, plus pain shooting down her left arm. Alarmed, she called her father, who had suffered heart problems in the past, and he told her to seek immediate medical attention.

In retrospect, she should have called 9-1-1. But instead, Pimenta jumped in her car and drove 10 minutes from her Orange home to her parents’ house in Milford. Her father drove her directly to the hospital.

The diagnosis: heart attack.

“They told me right away that I was having a heart attack, and it threw me for a loop,” says Pimenta, 51. “The pain was never really horrendous. I remember thinking, ‘This is what a heart attack feels like?’ ”

Saint Raphael cardiologist Clifford Kramer, M.D., explained to her that heart attack symptoms can vary greatly from person to person.

Many heart attack victims report crushing chest pain and pain down the left arm, some women feel only back pain and nausea, says Kramer, who’s board certified in cardiology.

Diabetics often only feel weakness and nausea during a heart attack. Elderly people may report only an overall sense of not feeling well.

“Women are generally good at reporting symptoms. But men tend to downplay things and try to avoid seeking medical attention,” he says. “But with even the possibility of a heart attack, that’s a dangerous thing. The critical message is to report any unusual symptoms to your doctor and seek immediate medical care. And if you think you’re having an heart attack, call 9-1-1.”

Hospitalized, Pimenta was treated with medications and then underwent an angioplasty at Saint Raphael’s to clear the blocked arteries that led to her heart attack. Five weeks of recovery at home followed.

“Having a heart attack has given me a whole different outlook,” says Pimenta, who is married and the mother of two sons, Justin, 25, and Ryan, 22. “It’s taught me that we should enjoy our lives every day, because who knows when we’re going to die? Now, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to have fun.”

Though heart disease runs on both sides of her family, Pimenta says she never worried about having a heart attack, partly because of her age. She was only 50 when this one struck. And neither of her parents’ heart problems surfaced until they were in their 70s — though her mother’s brother had suffered a fatal heart attack in his 40s. “I thought I was fine. But I was wrong,” she says.

Looking back, Pimenta sees she was putting a lot of stress on her body, combining a hectic pace with poor eating and exercise habits. A high-energy dynamo who works for a Fairfield County financing firm, Pimenta says she was daily commuting three hours to and from her full-time job, as well as immersed in volunteer activities. In her “spare time,” she was district president of Financial Women International and president-elect of the Westport Rotary.

With all this going on, there was little time for careful meal planning — meaning she often ate on the run and made poor food selections, such as processed deli meats or a handful of cookies for lunch. She also made no time for exercise. And when she did have a free hour, she used it to put her feet up.

“I was doing too much,” she says. “I’m the kind of person who likes having a lot of things going at one time, but didn’t realize what it was doing to my body.”

Pimenta also didn’t realize she was at a higher risk for heart attack because of her family history. But Kramer points out that the genetic component of heart disease is huge.

Most pre-menopausal women are protected against heart disease by the female hormone estrogen. However, a pre-menopausal woman’s chance of heart attack increase significantly if she – like Pimenta — has two or more of the following risk factors:
• Family history: If her mother had a heart attack before age 55, her father had a heart attack before age 45, or any siblings have heart trouble.
• Smoking cigarettes: Heavy smoking puts women at greater risk, but even one cigarette a day increases the chance of a heart attack.
• High cholesterol level.
• Diabetes.

Pimenta had three of the four: “Everything except diabetes.”

Though thankful to be alive and sustaining no permanent heart damage, Pimenta says the weeks after her heart attack were tough. Like many cardiac patients, she was depressed that her body had “broken down,” and that she couldn’t keep up her usual pace.

“It was hard for me to accept that I had to change so much about my life,” she says. “But I realized that if I didn’t change, I could have another heart attack, or I could die. The good thing about heart disease is that it can be controlled. And I plan to control it.”

As part of her recovery, Pimenta participated in Saint Raphael’s TakeHeart cardiac rehabilitation program, which includes personalized, supervised exercise sessions, as well as individual and group education classes. The program length varies from four to 12 weeks, depending on individual needs. Participants learn about heart disease, stress management, food choices and safe exercise options, with both recovery and understanding the importance of healthy lifestyle changes as its goal. A physician referral is needed.

Pimenta’s first focus was cleaning up her diet. Her husband of 29 years, Robert, wasted no time helping her get on the right track. He cleared their kitchen cabinets of junk food before she returned home from Saint Raphael’s, then stocked up on fruits, vegetables and other low-fat choices.

With the help of nutrition and exercise counselors, Pimenta began to better understand the importance of exercise, and started carving out time to walk each day. The combination of diet and exercise paid off, helping her shed 23 pounds and lower her cholesterol level.

“Lynn made a huge effort after her heart attack — she really engaged in the TakeHeart
program,” says Kramer.

Pimenta remains committed to a healthier lifestyle, saying it’s the best investment she can make in her future. She still thrives on business-related activities. But now makes time to plan low-fat meals and have healthy lunches and snacks – plus that all-important daily walk. Doctors recommend adults get at least 30 to 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each day.

“I listen to my body more, and spend more time on myself and relaxing,” she says. “And if some-thing doesn’t get done, tomorrow’s another day.”

Angela Mattei
Benign brain tumor

In the fall of 2001, Angela Mattei picked up the telephone in her Hamden apartment and discovered she had no hearing in her left ear. She brushed off the problem, figuring excessive ear wax was the cause.

She made an appointment with her physician to have the ear checked. But an exam showed it was clear. To be sure, she went to an ear, nose and throat specialist. When that exam also showed no blockage, she was referred to a neurosurgeon. A tumor was suspected for causing the hearing loss.

Angela, 69, panicked when she heard the word tumor. Although benign (non-cancerous) tumors had forced the removal of her gallbladder and one kidney, she couldn’t help but fear an ear or brain tumor might be cancerous, she says.

A brain scan delivered both good and bad news: no cancer, but a benign brain tumor called an acoustic neuroma that causes hearing loss. Ironically and almost unbelievably, says Saint Raphael neurosurgeon Isaac Goodrich, M.D., it was the same type of tumor Angela’s son Anthony developed, and had removed by Goodrich, during an 18-hour surgery more than a decade ago.

“He did well, and I assured Angela that she would, too,” says Goodrich, board-certified in neurosurgery.

“But I was still scared about the operation,” says Angela. “I thought, ‘Forget about it. This is the end.’ And I went into the operation crying.”

Acoustic neuromas grow on the surface of the brain, but not into brain tissue. They instead push on the brain as they enlarge, often resulting in irreversible hearing loss and facial paralysis. Continued tumor growth can be life threatening. Their cause is unknown, though some health experts believe they may be hereditary, Goodrich says. Because of this threat, Anthony had his 15-year-old daughter checked for the condition. “The test was clear,” he adds happily.

Hearing loss or a chronic ringing or “ear noise” are the most common symptoms. Treatment options include surgery or radiation therapy, and Angela had both: A more than seven-hour surgery to remove the bulk of the 3-centimeter tumor (roughly the width of a half-dollar), and then stereotactic radiosurgery to shrink the rest.

Anthony says he was delighted at how fast his mother bounced back after the initial surgery. “She was up and around in a very short time,” Anthony says, noting that because his tumor was larger – and the technology to remove it 13 years ago was less advanced — it took him far longer to recover after his surgery.

Angela says she was surprised by how well she felt after the operation, noting the only lingering effects were a few minor headaches and a 4- to 5-inch half-circle scar behind her ear. “The doctors did a very good job,” she says.

Stereotactic radiosurgery — a state-of-the-art and highly precise laser treatment that directs thin beams of radiation from multiple angles directly onto the tumor site — wasn’t available to Anthony more than a decade ago. In it, doctors use a machine called a linear accelerator and intricate computer technology to focus several, angled laser beams on a single affected site.

Like other forms of radiation, stereotactic radiosurgery works by distorting the structure of tumor cells so they lose their ability to reproduce or retain fluids that press on healthy brain structures, explains Robert Sinha, M.D. Sinha, a board-certified radiation oncologist, performs this procedure daily in Saint Raphael’s Father Michael J. McGivney Center for Cancer Care to treat both cancerous and non-cancerous tumors.

“It’s a revolutionary technological advance that can be an alternative to traditional surgery, or used in conjunction with it,” says Sinha, who treated Angela along with Goodrich. “The risk of long-term complications is drastically reduced. Angela’s tumor was close to her brain stem. And to remove the whole tumor with traditional surgery, there was a risk of damaging nearby nerves. But by combining radiosurgery with traditional surgery, there was a less than 1 percent chance of injuring her facial nerve, her motor nerves or the nerves affecting her hearing.”

Saint Raphael’s has been using stereotactic radiosurgery since November 1998. Patients with tumors smaller than 2 1/2 to 3 centimeters wide can often opt for this instead of traditional surgery. While Angela’s tumor was 3 centimeters, she needed both types of surgery: traditional surgery to remove the bulk of the tumor and relieve pressure on her brain, then stereotactic to remove tumor parts near the sensitive area.

Like Angela, patients who undergo the procedure must wear a rigid, specially made facial mask that protects the eyes and nose, and which pinpoints where the beams should be focused. Since most acoustic neuromas treated this way do not regrow or recur, Goodrich has high hopes for Angela. “So far so good,” he says. “I think she’s going to be fine.”

Regular check-ups over the next few years will confirm this. And Angela is determined to stay focused on the positive. “I’m thankful they caught it and it wasn’t cancerous,” Angela says. “With the new life I have now, I’m going to try to get away more — to Florida and Foxwoods. And I’m finally going to start decorating my apartment. There’s a lot I have to do.”

Charles Taylor
Degenerative osteoarthritis

At an imposing 6-feet, 5-inches and 260 pounds, Hamden High School Assistant Principal Charles Taylor has never had too many problems with students.

Health woes have been his greatest challenge, keeping him out of work and off his feet for almost a year.

Taylor, 53, blames rough and tumble high school football and long days working on his family’s cotton farm in Mississippi for causing osteoarthritis in his hips and knees. And in the fall of 2001, he was so wracked with arthritic pain he thought he might have to retire early: “I’d wince at each step. It was terrible.”

Today, however, he’s pain free, thanks to two artificial knees and an artificial left hip implanted by surgeons at the Hospital of Saint Raphael.

“Part of the thing I love about doing joint replacements is that you can really make a difference in a person’s life,” says David Gibson, M.D., section chief of Orthopedics at the Hospital of Saint Raphael. “You can take people like Charles, who are unable to walk, and really make a tremendous improvement in their lives.

“Here was a young guy who had osteoarthritis and significant problems in three out of his four lower joints,” Gibson continues. “We laid out a program to fix them, and now Charles is back at the top of his game.”

Osteoarthritis, also called degenerative joint disease, is painful and gradual deterioration of joint cartilage. It’s the most common form of arthritis, affecting more than 16 million Americans – men and women equally. In it, the cartilage that cushions and protects joint surfaces from rubbing together starts to wear away. Without this cushioning, bone surfaces rub directly against each other, causing damage to the joint.

Pain and stiffness usually develop slowly over many years. They can come and go and be especially noticeable in the morning. But as cartilage destruction progresses, the pain can become more frequent, and – as it was for Taylor — even the smallest movements cause severe shooting pain.

Though heredity is a risk factor for osteoarthritis, Gibson says Taylor’s rough youth definitely caused his problems. “Though it’s unusual for people to have such severe joint damage at such an early age, the damage we saw in him was a post-sporting injury,” says Gibson, who’s board-certified in orthopedic surgery. “A lot of professional football players kind of look like him.”

A tight end on his Mississippi high school football team in the 1960s, Taylor was playing in a practice game when he was tackled and landed on his right knee. The blow caused so much pain in his knee and hip, he remembers, that he couldn’t stand up for at least 10 minutes.

Though he was advised to see a doctor, physicians were scarce in his small hometown. So he didn’t, and the pain eventually went away.

But when he fell during football several weeks later, the pain in his right leg was so bad that he was rushed to the hospital. His knee looked OK. But X-rays showed part of his right hip was chipped and coming out of the socket.

A pin was surgically implanted to hold the hip in place. But while the pin took away his pain, it also took his dream of playing football at Mississippi State University. And he now walked with a slight limp.

Life, however, quickly moved on, he says.

He graduated high school and college; moved to Connecticut; and took a job teaching and coaching football at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, and later across the city at Lee High School. He married, Brenda, a teacher at New Haven’s Wilbur Cross High School, and had two children, Brandon and Lauren.

“Next thing I know, I’m in my 40s rolling along, and life is good. Then all of a sudden in 1990, I can hardly walk because of the pain in my right knee,” Taylor remembers.

Medications helped. But an X-ray showed severe, degenerative arthritis, and Taylor was told he needed the knee replaced. He agreed. And after a smooth operation, Taylor was back at work within a few months — although with a slightly more pronounced limp.

Then in June 2001, his left knee started hurting. Taylor went to Gibson and was surprised to learn that his earlier football injuries has sparked severe osteoarthritis in his left hip and knee. Both would need to be replaced.

With a summer vacation to North Carolina already planned, Taylor decided to put off the operation until at least the fall. But one morning in August he woke up with such severe leg pain that his wife had to call 9-1-1. Shockingly, the pain was coming from not his left knee, but the right – the knee that had been replaced more than a decade earlier.

Emergency doctors quickly discovered that Taylor’s artificial knee had become infected – an unusual occurrence, Gibson explains, that probably occurred because Taylor favored the knee, and muscles and tissues sat stagnant. Strong antibiotics were prescribed to clear the infection. Then on Nov. 8, 2001, a new knee was implanted.

Two months later, he had his left hip replaced, as well.

Recovery from the two surgeries had him out of work for almost all of the 2001-02 school year. But in June 2002, he went ahead and had his left knee replaced, too. “It was a difficult decision. But I felt it was the only way I could get life back to normal. I needed to get that knee replaced at some point. So it seemed to make sense to do it sooner, rather than later,” Taylor says.

He spent most of that summer undergoing physical therapy. But with the help of a cane, he was able to return this past fall to the Hamden High assistant principal’s desk – though he hardly ever sits there.

“Today, I can walk the school building – thankfully without any pain,” says Taylor, who still has a slight limp. “Everyday I’m out there walking the hallways, meeting the buses, attending sporting events, talking with kids in the cafeteria. I’m on my feet all day and loving every minute of it. After suffering so much pain and spending so much time in the hospital, I love the normalcy of everyday life.”

This page was last updated on 11/26/2003