Esophageal Cancer: Ronald Preston

#esophagealcancer
When Ronald Preston's heartburn began to get worse, he went to see his doctor. Thankfully, they were able to catch his cancer in time. Find out more about esophageal cancer here: uvahealth.com/services/esopha...
Transcript
RONALD PRESTON:
My name's Ronald Preston. Just turned 60 years old. I was born in Bedford, Virginia. I've lived here all my life and it's a wonderful place to live.
KAREN STEPTOE:
I've known Ronald for 43 years. Ronald is a very good man. He can tell a joke in a minute. He keeps me laughing.
RONALD:
My first symptoms was like a heartburn, and they got worse and worse. So I went to my family physician and could you direct me to some place to have this checked out? He ran the scope down my throat and took a biopsy. And then when I come back and find out that I had small cell cancer.
KAREN:
I was just so heartbroken. Because, you know, you first heard the word cancer, you think the worst.
RONALD:
So I decided to fight. So they sent me up to UVA and that's where I met Dr. Scott and his team.
CHRISTOPHER SCOTT, MD:
When Ronald was first referred to me approximately two years ago, he had what I estimated as stage two or early stage three esophageal cancer. We know from very robust literature
that his best survival is in a three part therapy: chemotherapy, radiation, followed by surgery. After he fully completed the chemotherapy and radiation, we performed Ronald's esophagectomy with the use of the surgical robot. This allowed us to do the operation in a minimally invasive manner. That means instead of a large, conventional, open incision on the abdomen and the chest, we were able to make several smaller incisions and use a camera to be able to do the surgery.
RONALD:
In a way, I did have some worries about it because that's the first time I've ever been in a major surgery like that.
KAREN:
I felt a whole lot better when Dr. Scott came out to say that everything went well and now we're going to go forward, you know, to to the healing process.
CHRISTOPHER SCOTT, MD:
Ronald's recovery went remarkably well. He was discharged home in seven days from the hospital. He came back to see me on a routine post-operative visit two weeks after his surgery, and at that point, he was off of all of his pain medication. He was driving, running errands and eating a soft diet without any issue whatsoever.
RONALD:
I just had CT scan, and for us, we're now home cancer free. I'm looking to have a good cancer-free life for me and my girlfriend, to live together and ride off into the sunset.