Chris Gibbens, 60, was expecting to die soon and had begun to say his goodbyes. It was November 2010, and he had been diagnosed with “probable lymphoma” after dropping down to 125 pounds.

Cabinetmaker Chris Gibbens installs bookshelf he made for the Clinic as he chats with Executive Director Mary Fields

Gibbens’ sisters flew him to Michigan where two doctors diagnosed him with probable lymphoma. But he couldn’t afford a biopsy or treatment. One of his sisters, a retired RN, found doctors willing to do the biopsy, “but no hospital that would let them do it,” he recounted. “We kept hitting these roadblocks.”

Gibbens’s sister returned with him to Florida and started the process of getting him onto  Medicaid. “But that takes six months, and I was going to be dead in six months, as I knew it at the time,” he said.

“There’s not a lot of assistance for people who have no insurance,” Gibbens pointed out. He was ready to give up, but his sister persevered. Then they heard about VIM Clinic.

That,  Gibbens said, “was the first  miracle.”

Emaciated

Gibbens “looked awfully ill,” the first time Dr. Howard Voss saw him. “He was so skinny and emaciated, he looked as though he had gotten out of a concentration camp.”

Voss was immediately suspicious of the diagnoses. “His disease was so chronic, he’d had it for so long, that if it were a lymphoma, I thought he’d have been dead by now.”

In fact, the doctors’ notes did mention another possibility — celiac disease. That’s what Dr. Voss homed in on.

He suspected celiac sprue, an autoimmune disease that causes the body to turn on itself and create antibodies against its own intestinal tract. The treatment? A gluten-free diet.

Dr. Voss had seen many cases of sprue during the Vietnam war. That sprue was different in that it was an infectious disease, but the symptoms were the same: abdominal pain, loss of appetite, severe diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and extreme weight loss.

Through VIM, Gibbens was referred to gastroenterologist, Dr. Amitabh Kumar. An endoscopy, colonoscopy and bloodwork were all done. A biopsy found no cancer. An antibody test confirmed celiac sprue. Gibbens’ body couldn’t absorb nutrients because of the gluten in grains.

‘Dodged a Bullet’

“For two months, I had it in my head this this was lymphoma,” Gibbens said. “For two months I thought…”

Gibbens swallowed as he struggled for a moment with that thought. “I started saying my goodbyes,” he finished.

Gibbens believes a higher power was looking out for him. “I dodged a bullet,” he said. “It’s pretty crazy to think that wheat would almost kill you, but it almost killed me.”

Dr. Voss thinks Gibbens had celiac for years before it became acute. Left untreated, a person can die from the lack of nutrition.

“The treatment is simple after you’ve made the diagnosis,” Dr. Voss said. “But it’s very hard to have a gluten-free diet.”

Gibbens bought a book, Sprue for Dummies, and assiduously monitors his diet. In two months, he put on 50 pounds. In fact, when he returned to the clinic in May, Dr. Voss didn’t know who he was.

“He’s grown a beard and gained so much weight that I literally did not recognize him. He looks wonderful.”

Gibbens did suffer one setback, though, when a restaurant assured him his meal was gluten-free and it wasn’t.

“Just that one incident caused him to go through it all again,” Dr. Voss noted. “The symptoms persisted for over a month, just from that one meal.”

Second Miracle

Gibbens finally did get Medicaid and is no longer a VIM patient, but he wanted to say thank you for the care he received at the clinic. So, the cabinetmaker built and delivered a beautiful glass and oak bookcase. “I’ve got my life back, I’m healthy. I just can’t thank the volunteers enough,” he said.

Gibbens wanted to pay something back, not only for his health, but for his second miracle — the chance to repair his relationship with his daughter.

“Since all this, it’s brought us a lot closer — her and my grandkids,” he said. “In fact,” he added, smiling broadly, “I’m going to visit them tomorrow.”

Four days after his lung surgery, VIM Clinic patient Quay Giao is recovering in a private room at Martin Memorial Health Systems. He’s sitting in a chair, talking to a visitor, as surgeon Sunil Gandhi walks in the room.

Giao is groggy and moving slowly. He’s looking even smaller and more frail than usual, but he’s alert. He smiles broadly as he stands up, cups his hands together and bows to Dr. Gandhi.

There’s a wide variety of newspapers stacked up on the bed and side table. Giao’s body is sore and he’s not feeling too good. Even so, his thirst for current events evidently remains insatiable.

Giao winces as he moves because of the pain in his ribs. That’s the worst part, he says. It feels like his ribs have been broken. The surgeons had to get through the ribs to excise part of Giao’s lung for a biopsy. He has a bandage over the wound in his back and a tube in chest to drain fluid.

Originally treated for a lymphoma in his stomach, a follow up PET scan detected a spot on Giao’s lung. Physicians were concerned that Giao, who’d been a heavy smoker most of his life, had lung cancer. Hence the surgery to remove the affected tissue.

Gandhi had warned Giao that depending on what was found, he could end up removing as much as 40 percent of the left lung.

Giao, however, had always been confident about his outcome. He confided as much when he was at the VIM Clinic the week before his procedure, when Dr. Howard Voss cleared him for surgery. Turns out, he was right.

In the hospital room, Dr. Gandhi is impressed with Giao’s recovery, although Giao will need to stay in the hospital a day longer than first anticipated.

“He’s recovered well, better than I expected,” Dr. Gandhi said. He’s very pleased, indeed, with the outcome – as is Dr. Voss: Giao does not have lung cancer.

“We thought the mass that we had identified in his lung was cancerous,” Gandhi said. “However, it turned out to be more of an inflammatory mass, so it worked out in his favor.”

The mass may have been related to a childhood bout with tuberculosis, Dr. Voss suggested. The two centimeter mass in the upper lobe of his left lung was friable – easily fragmented – and easily removed.

Giao will go home in a few days. He’s anxious to get back to work and he’s planning a trip to Vietnam so he can see his octogenarian father and the ancient mountains of Da Nang.

One of the first things you notice about 51-year-old Quy Giao (pronounced Wee Yao) is his size. He weighs less than 100 pounds and has been a heavy smoker for 30 years. So when a spot was found on his lung during a checkup, cancer was the obvious suspect.

Through VIM Clinic, Giao had been successfully treated for lymphoma in his stomach, which remained in remission after a year. However, a follow-up PET scan revealed a worrisome dark spot on the upper left lobe of his lung.

Giao was referred to Dr. Sunil Gandhi, who agreed to operate, but only if Giao quit smoking.
Dr. Gandhi would need to remove tissue for a biopsy and, depending on what he found, might remove up to 40 percent of the lung.

Perhaps the second thing you notice about Giao is his intelligence. He makes a living detailing cars, but he is a voracious reader with a remarkable memory. He can discuss world history, politics, philosophy and current events.

DEVOTED FRIENDS

Giao has some very devoted friends who have opened  their homes to him.

“He rented an apartment from my husband and became a dear family friend,” said Kim Stanton of Sewalls Point. They’ve known Giao for over 20 years and decided he was to convalesce at their home.

Giao lives in Hobe Sound, but the Stantons were closer to the hospital. Besides, he would need help at home after the surgery.

“It’s a pleasure to have him around,” Stanton said. “He’s very hard-working and smart. He learns everything on his own and is very industrious.”

SURGICAL CLEARANCE

Dr. Howard Voss, Medical Director at the VIM Clinic, needed to provide clearance for surgery, so he had Giao’s lungs and heart tested.

“His EKG was normal and a pulmonary function study showed his lungs were remarkably normal, given his smoking history,” Dr. Voss said. There were no contraindications so Giao’s surgery was scheduled for the following week, on July 6.

IN THE OR

“He’s so light!”
That’s the first thing OR nurse Uma Singh noticed about Giao, as she helped lift him onto the operating room table.  “It’s like lifting a child.”
Giao was semi-conscious, laid out under a blanket as the OR crew at Martin Memorial efficiently went about their business getting him ready for the surgery. Dr. Carlos Maldonado was there to assist.
The surgery went well. Giao woke up in recovery and was taken to his room. Dr. Gandhi would discharge him from the hospital four days later, but he would have a diagnosis much sooner than that.