By the time Thomas Wages arrived at UAMS on February 15, 2022, he had been through one cancer diagnosis and 13 types of intensive chemotherapy. He was 70. The active father of four was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) in 2008, devastating news that came during one of the happiest times of his life….
The future was anything but hopeful for John Apple, 70, a retired corporate accountant from Conway.
Diagnosed in 2021 with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), commonly known as an enlarged prostate, Apple was told by his physician that he had only two treatment options: a surgical procedure that could likely have little effect on his condition or wearing a catheter the rest of his life.
Just two and a half weeks after Thomas Frazier, M.D., underwent a total knee replacement as the first surgical patient at The Orthopaedic & Spine Hospital at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), he was back to seeing patients in his orthopaedic clinic. By the third week, he was performing surgery at the…
Sickle cell disease hasn’t made life easy for Xavius Hymes, 27, of Pine Bluff, but he hasn’t let it keep him from dreaming big. In fact, he uses the disease as fuel to keep going. “If anything, I feel like sickle cell anemia has made me mentally stronger,” Hymes said in a YouTube video. “It’s…
| One day as Haley Myers Clark looked out the window of her Camden home, lost in painful memories of losing her premature son, Noah, a little blue butterfly fluttered by. “My mom would always tell me, ‘If you see a butterfly, that’s somebody from Heaven coming to see you, and that’s God sending a…
After years of learning how to handle pain crises when they come and developing a routine for care, Cyncere Tidwell says sickle cell disease is just another part of her life. “Other than the pain crises, sickle cell doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I’ve been dealing with it for so long that it’s nothing new…
John Reed, RN, is on the front lines of cancer. As a nurse in the UAMS Endoscopy Lab, he spends about 50 weeks a year helping patients through colon cancer screening procedures, mainly colonoscopies. But after a routine doctor’s appointment in 2020, Reed became the patient. “I felt fine, but my iron levels were really…
For throat cancer survivor Shalonda Michelle, there are exactly 3,815 miles between being sick and being healthy. It’s the distance between Fairbanks, Alaska, where her medical journey began, to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, where she finally found healing. Michelle’s harrowing experience began in 2010. She was…
UAMS patient treated by James Suen, M.D., is one of the oldest living cancer survivors in Arkansas A favorite pillow in Maddie Upton’s Camden, Arkansas, home reads, ‘I’m so far up the hill, I’ve started up the next one.’ At 104, there is no old age joke she hasn’t heard, and she shows no…
All Quatisa East wanted was for her infant daughter, Dallas Carter, to be able to see. A rare diagnosis of retinoblastoma, or cancer of the eye, threatened that possibility. “I didn’t give up on her — everything I’ve done is just being a mother,” said the 29-year-old. It’s been a long road for Dallas and…