Cryoablation

If you know me at all, or ever heard me talk over the past almost five years, then you already know I had breast cancer. And you already know I opted against surgery, but rather decided to take a chance on the excellence of a radiologist in Freehold, Centra State Hospital, both of whom were willing to try cryoablation as a means of curing breast cancer without surgery. At the time, my oncologist and the radiologist both told me it was a gamble. They felt assured the procedure would work just fine, but they explained it was on trial, a woman had to meet certain specifications in order to be in the trial, and I met the specifications. Did I want to try it? The radiologist explained everything to me; actually, he had me sold when he said it was ‘minimally invasive.” What he meant, and what happened, was they simply numbed my skin, and guided by an ultrasound, he inserted a little probe directly into the tumor. The liquid nitrogen in the probe created sub-zero temperatures which turned the tumor into an ice ball, freezing the cancer to death and not bothering anything else. After the half hour procedure, the doctor put a band-aid over the little hole the needle had made, and I simply got up off the table, got dressed, thanked my new friends, and met some friends for lunch an hour later. For the medical team, it was science being proven. For me, it was an entire new appreciation for medical people and trials to create new and better treatments for cancer. So then I needed to know who made this new kind of magic and learned it was a small very young company in Caesarea, Israel, and they had offered their invention to the United States and many other countries for trial and ultimate approval. They have an office in New Jersey and Centra State Hospital was only one of 17 hospitals across the country involved in the trial, which would ultimately be five years long. I was the third person to undergo it. Next month, it will be five years since that Feb.2 morning that I watched on his computer screen as Dr. Tomkovich calmly conducted this very simple, painless and non-invasive (I don’t consider a needle in my skin a real invasion) procedure that left me free of cancer in less than half an hour, just 47 days after I first learned I had cancer. So it’s been five years since I have been high on praise of this very young but very vibrant and intellectual company on the Mediterranean Sea in Israel. Follow this blog in future weeks. I want to talk more about the procedure itself; I’ve already spread the story in many newspapers, but want to share it again, just in case you missed the magic of Ice Cure. I want to tell you more about how I discovered the tumor in the first place, why I opted to do a trial, how I learned more about the procedure and the company that made it, and how my life has definitely been enriched, blessed, and more exciting because of two doctors, a hospital and a company in Israel.