Cancer – Wellspring

Catching Cancer Early Makes All the Difference

Sylvia Cole is intimately familiar with cancer’s randomness, its pain and the suffering it can cause. She survived a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, but lost her father to liver cancer in 2004. She has had many family members, co-workers and friends touched by cancer, so she knows that when something isn’t “right,” you need…
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Diligent Diagnostics

“I never thought I would get cancer. I never, ever thought it was possible. It doesn’t run in my family, and I didn’t feel a lump,” says Diana Muehlhausen, 65, of Rio Vista. ABOVE: Diana Muehlhausen and husband, Jay, signal OK and Zero for how she’s feeling and the fact that she’s cancer-free, thanks to…
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Family Grateful for Mom’s Dream of a Lifetime

ABOVE: The family of hospice patient Patsy Harpe pose for a photo at her Dream of a Lifetime party, including her daughters, Layce Little and Kelli Harpe (left to right, in white dresses) and their daughters, along with Thrieza Zapanta, who is seated next to Kathleen Diaz, NorthBay Hospice Nurse. Fulfilling a terminally ill patient’s…
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Cancer Specialists Ready to Go to Battle for their Patients

It’s rare for a small, community-based hospital to offer all of the sophisticated medical services typically found in a big-city cancer center, but that’s exactly what is available at the NorthBay Cancer Center, according to Lori Muir, director of Oncology Services for NorthBay Healthcare. Above: A trio of oncologists at NorthBay Cancer Center share a…
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Helping Leukemia Patient on His Journey

It was a mother’s worst nightmare: Your son has severe, flu-like symptoms and an uncontrolled nosebleed that, you learn, is the result of a life-threatening illness. You are new to the community and don’t know where to turn for care. ABOVE: NorthBay Healthcare’s highly trained oncology staff, including Carolyn Bailey, R.N., and James Long, M.D.,…
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Seeking Cancer Connections

You inherited your eye color from your mom and your hair color from your dad. Did one of them give you an elevated risk of cancer, too? That question could now be answered through a new genetic counseling and testing service available at NorthBay Healthcare. Karen Vikstrom, who has more than 15 years of experience…
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A TrueBeam Tactic

Engineer Fascinated by SBRT Treatment When Ford Pray, 89, learned he would have to undergo stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to treat a lung tumor, the retired engineer’s curiosity was piqued. What was this new treatment and how did it work? “Being an engineer by trade I’m curious about everything,” he said. “This experience was…
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Cancer Center Spans 30 Years

In the mid-1980s, the medical staff treating cancer patients at Intercommunity Hospital believed it was time to bring radiation therapy to Fairfield. They presented the idea to hospital CEO Gary Passama and he agreed. It was the first step in bringing advanced medicine close to home. Local physicians, led by surgeon Robert Parker, M.D., approached…
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