Jacksonville, Fl — Celebrating 20 years of changing lives, the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute combines cutting edge technology with caring hearts to save lives every day.
Jacksonville’s Morning News has been bringing you Chime Stories every Friday morning. Aud’s Chime rings inside the atrium at the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute every time a patient finishes treatment.
Beth and Josh Pinsky got a cancer diagnosis in February 2012. Their son Aaron who was 4 at the time started experiencing pain.
“He goes to his room to take a nap and he wakes up and calls for us because he cannot get up. He couldn’t stand,” Pinsky said.
They rushed Aaron to the children’s hospital in South Florida where they lived at the time. After scans, doctors found a large tumor on his spine.
“He had to have emergency surgery that night. They were able to get to about 90% of his tumor but had to leave about 10% of it behind because of where it was,” Pinsky said.
The diagnosis was Stage 4 Ewing sarcoma. Only around 250 kids were diagnosed every year. The family was faced with radiation and treatment options.
“It wasn’t the greatest thing for a now 5-year-old who is very much still growing. And to hit the target of tumor on his spine and not get to his heart, lungs, vital organs,” said Josh Pinsky.
Then they heard about proton therapy. At the time there were few in the world - but Jacksonville had one - which opened in 2006.
Aaron went through 28 rounds of radiation at the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute, and did it without sedation.
“I can never, ever still come up with the right words because I don’t think exist for the gratitude we have for Dr. Danny (Indelicato), for all of the staff, for the institute itself. The technology is amazing but it was the people who got us through this,” Pinsky said.
Aaron is now thriving as a young adult, and is a student at the University of Florida, where is a studying to be a doctor.
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