Cayol Johnson spent years in pain before a kidney cancer diagnosis forced her into a hard choice about her health. "I had to do something," Johnson said. "I mean, it was a matter of trying to go on with my kidneys, or my kidneys fail."
She went on to become the first patient in Cochise County to receive a treatment called cryoablation, which is now offered at Canyon Vista Medical Center in Sierra Vista. The hospital invested in equipment so the procedure could be performed locally. According to the hospital, it is the only medical facility in the county that offers it.
Cryoablation is minimally invasive and uses extreme cold to freeze and destroy cancerous tissue. Dr. Orlando Micheli, an interventional radiologist, said it can serve as an alternative for some patients with kidney, liver or lung cancer. He pointed in particular to those who may not be healthy enough for traditional surgery.
"We are in the era of somebody coming in. They have cancer. They have a procedure, and literally they leave the hospital and they don't have cancer anymore, which is amazing," Micheli said.
He also described a key difference from standard kidney surgery. In that approach, doctors may have to remove the tumor along with some healthy kidney tissue. "A surgical approach would be to go in and sort of cut that part of the kidney out, which means cutting out the tumor and also normal functioning kidney cells, which is sort of unfavorable, particularly in this patient population," he said.
For residents of Cochise County, the local availability of the treatment may also mean skipping a trip to Tucson or another larger city. Johnson said she had grown tired of being sent away for care. "They're always telling us, 'Oh, you got to have this done, but you got to go to Tucson,'" she said. "If they can't do it here, I don't do it."
Micheli said staying near family and support systems matters for people facing serious illness. "It's good to keep patients by their support system, so near their families, near where they live, preventing travel because travel in the setting of the sick patient is just highly unfavorable," he said. He added that the procedure at Canyon Vista is the same one patients could get at larger centers. "This procedure that we do here is the same whether it's done at, you know, Banner or anywhere on the East Coast," Micheli said.
Three months after her procedure, Johnson reports she is pain-free and feeling better than she has in years. "The pain is gone. It was just like it disappeared," she said.
She also credited the staff at the hospital for the way she was treated. "A lot of times, you know, people look at you, and you're just a number, but not here," Johnson said. "You're a person that they care about." Receiving care close to home, she said, brought relief and reassurance: "It's like a cloud come over you and took care of you. That's the way I felt."
