You couldn’t blame Thom Mrozek, a 62-year-old government agency spokesman based in Los Angeles, for eagerly watching the calendar and counting the days. On New Year’s Day, he will realize a lifelong dream: riding in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.
“We’ve been going since I was a kid,” he says, “and I currently live 250 yards from the end of the parade route. We’d camp out in Old Town [the city’s original business district]. This was a major event in our household.”
Of course, the circumstances are slightly different than he imagined growing up.
Mrozek will be aboard the City of Hope float, this year named “A Beautiful Day for Hope.” He was selected because of a remarkable, life-changing achievement. Mrozek has beaten pancreatic cancer, a notoriously deadly disease that strikes more than 60,000 people each year. Twelve years after his diagnosis, Mrozek shows no evidence of disease, amazing considering the 10-year survival rate barely registers, hovering around 1%.
Once very private about his illness, Mrozek now proudly and publicly talks about his journey, and the people who helped him. “City of Hope is very dear to my heart,” he says.
Mrozek’s First Pancreatic Cancer Symptoms
When Mrozek was 49 — relatively young for a pancreatic cancer diagnosis — he began experiencing stomach pains that would worsen during the day. Initial testing showed his pancreatic enzymes were “off the charts” and further tests, including an endoscopy and biopsy, led to his diagnosis on Feb. 29, 2012. A mass was growing on the head of his pancreas, pressing against the portal vein, blocking the bile duct, backing up those enzymes and causing the pain he was experiencing.
Pain that probably saved his life.
Pancreatic cancer is known as one of the “silent killers” because most patients show no symptoms in the early stages. By the time they do feel ill, the cancer has spread and the prognosis is grim. Mrozek’s situation was rare: The tumor’s location caused discomfort right at the start, alerting him and his doctors, and enabling him to be treated successfully.
“I was very, very unlucky to have this happen,” he said, “and very lucky to have it happen where it did.”
Luckier, perhaps, than even he realizes.
“We don’t know why tumors that look exactly the same act differently in different patients,” explained City of Hope’s Stephen J. Forman, M.D., director of the Hematologic Malignancies Research Institute and professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation. “Our goal would be to ‘make more Thoms.’”
Helping that effort is a recent historic $150 million gift to City of Hope from entrepreneurs and philanthropists A. Emmet Stephenson Jr. and his daughter Tessa Stephenson Brand to immediately fund pancreatic cancer research. The gift aims to dramatically change the trajectory of pancreatic cancer research by helping City of Hope and partner institutions develop advances that deliver breakthroughs in the prevention, detection and treatment of this all-too-often deadly disease.
Swift Whipple Procedure Treatment
Barely a week after his diagnosis, Mrozek was in surgery for the so-called Whipple procedure, in which the head of the pancreas, the first part of the small intestine, the gallbladder and the bile duct are removed. Pathology tests determined the cancer had invaded nearby lymph nodes. He would need chemotherapy.
But Mrozek didn’t feel comfortable with oncologists at the local hospital where he’d had the surgery. He began a wide search, looking up doctors from California to New York.
Before his surgery, a mutual friend had told Mrozek about Dr. Forman. When Mrozek emailed Dr. Forman, just for advice, he received a reply late on a Saturday night (“I couldn’t believe it,” said Mrozek). The message was simple: “Is there any way I can assist?”
“He consulted with me,” said Mrozek, amazed that Dr. Forman would devote so much time to someone who was not his patient. “He became my sounding board as I went through the process.” And when Mrozek told Dr. Forman he was considering an oncologist in San Francisco, Dr. Forman, in effect, ended the search. “No,” he said. “You need to come here.”
“I knew Thom was going to need day-to-day care for the intensive chemotherapy regimen he needed,” said Dr. Forman. “He wasn’t going to get that hopping back and forth to San Francisco.”
While Dr. Forman’s specialty is blood cancer, he also has expertise in solid tumors, plus, as he puts it, “We have immediate backup here” at City of Hope, referring to the broad, multidisciplinary resources readily available.
Managing Pancreatic Cancer Treatment Side Effects
Dr. Forman took over Mrozek’s care, administering a six-month course of FOLFIRINOX, the standard chemotherapy treatment for pancreatic cancer that has spread, consisting of leucovorin calcium (folinic acid), fluorouracil, irinotecan hydrochloride and oxaliplatin. Dr. Forman also was right about the “day-to-day.” Mrozek frequently needed to return to City of Hope to deal with a variety of side effects and health challenges, including a bout with sepsis and a blood infection. Dr. Forman helped Mrozek through it every step of the way.
“He is the most wonderful doctor — and person — I’ve ever met,” Mrozek says.
“Thom muscled his way through his treatment,” says Dr Forman.
After “losing a year” to surgery and chemotherapy, today Mrozek lives essentially a normal life. The remainder of his pancreas continues to produce insulin, so he is not diabetic, although he does take pancreatic enzymes and vitamin and mineral supplements to aid digestion. He still experiences some “ongoing reminders” — some blood sugar imbalances from time to time and some foods which, in his words, “don’t digest well.”
More than doctor and patient, Mrozek and Dr. Forman have become close friends, and when the City of Hope float — with Mrozek aboard — rolls down Colorado Boulevard, Dr. Forman will be there too, just as he has for the last decade though, truth be told, he wasn’t always a fan of the idea.
“I was so resistant at first. I turned down the opportunity for many years,” Dr. Forman recalled. “But then a patient of mine was scheduled to ride, and [my being there] was very important to him.” So, he tried it, and “I was very moved by the experience.”
Dr. Forman likes to walk alongside the float so he can interact with parade-goers, among them many former patients. “I get so much joy out of watching them,” he said. “Seeing them so happy, so healthy, no more hospital bands around their wrists. I love taking in their emotional, heartfelt responses.”
He likes the message the float sends out to the crowd — and the crowd’s reaction.
“This isn’t a ‘fun’ float,” he says. “People respond to the meaning of who we are. We’re telling them, ‘We’re here on New Year’s Day. We’re here every day.'”
Being there with his friend Thom will reinforce that message. “There’s always hope,” said Dr. Forman. “Hope for a cure, for long-term survival, hope to see your children’s weddings, graduations. Thom has become an example for others of what we want to achieve.”
Main image: Thom with his wife Lisa.