CHICAGO (CBS) — Getting a second opinion made all the difference for a River Forest man—who was found to have pancreatic cancer, but is now cancer-free.
Alex Timchak , 47, is a husband and father—and also a doctor himself.
Over the July 4th weekend this past summer, he had a deep cough. While the cough went away, a suspicious pain in his left side did not.
Timchak went to his primary care doctor, who said imaging showed his pancreas was inflamed and his pancreatic duct enlarged, according to Northwestern Medicine.
The primary care doctor referred Timchak to a gastroenterologist at another health system. An endoscopy revealed no mass, and biopsy results came back normal, Northwestern Medicine said.
But the pain persisted, so Timchak turned to Dr. Srinadh Komanduri at the Northwestern Medicine Oak Brook Outpatient Center, where he underwent another biopsy.
Timchak, whose son is in college at the University of Alabama, was sitting in the stands at an Alabama football game when Komanduri called with the results.