Patients and alumni from across the country came to celebrate the Proton Treatment Center’s Alumni Homecoming on Sunday, Nov. 16. Held in Wong Kerlee International Conference Center, current and former patients gathered to hear stories of how proton treatment helped them beat cancer.
One such story came from a couple newly moved to Minnesota. John and Eileen Raynolds experienced what it was like to be part of the Proton Treatment Center’s family of patients a year ago when Mr. Raynolds started proton therapy for prostate cancer.
“I’m convinced that the Loma Linda Proton Treatment Center saved my life,” Mr. Raynolds says. With a Gleason score of 10, an indicator that the cancer was severe, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., doubted anything other than radiation would work.
“We came to know the love of the people here,” Mrs. Raynolds says. The Raynolds have responded to that in a very generous manner. While speaking at the homecoming, Mr. Raynolds pledged $25,000 to the James M. Slater Endowed Chair for Proton Therapy Research.
More than that, the two, who are firm believers in positive attitudes, started the Loma Linda Love Lions for pediatric proton patients. Mrs. Raynolds tells the story of one of their last visits and how they met Gerry Troy, MSW, social worker for radiation medicine. Mr. Troy was trying to comfort a small girl about to begin her first proton treatment and enlisted the help of Mrs. Raynolds to try and calm the girl. “It was definitely a first class failure,” remembers Mrs. Raynolds.
Walking out of the Proton Treatment Center, she and her husband passed by the gift shop. A stuffed animal caught her eye, and Mrs. Raynolds knew that she had to get it for the little girl. When she brought it down to the gantries, the child saw her with the animal and came running to Mrs. Raynolds and embraced both her and the toy.
The dramatic response from the girl solidified in Mrs. Raynolds’ mind the need for all pediatric patients to have something that let them know it was okay to be a kid during treatments. So the couple provided 100 stuffed lions to the radiation medicine department to help give courage and hope to pediatric proton patients.
Natalie Von Rembow, a high school senior who underwent proton therapy and also spoke that Sunday, proved the real need for the lions. Mrs. Raynolds gave her a stuffed toy as she went up to speak and Natalie immediately clutched it to herself. Natalie and her mother, Terri Emmett, told the story of Natalie’s bout against a rare form of a skullbase cancer. “It wasn’t a typical hospital feeling,” remembers Natalie, “it was very positive.
Jerry Slater, M.D., chair of the radiation medicine department at Loma Linda University Medical Center, gave a brief overview of the history of the Proton Treatment Center and the new developments taking place. Three new clinical trials will begin soon for early lung cancer, early dose escalation and locally advanced prostate cancer, and early stage breast cancer.
The breast cancer trial will be a pilot program. James Slater, M.D., the pioneering mind behind the Proton Treatment Center, explained briefly the necessity of continuing research. “We needed a facility to treat people better, and now we need research to make that treatment better,” Dr. Slater says. In what he called a mammoth task with enormous steps to be taken, research into new uses for proton therapy are underway thanks to the many donors contributing to the James M. Slater Endowed Chair for Proton Therapy Research.
