From a scary diagnosis of an uncommon blood cancer, to weeks and even months of treatment, one Iowa man is thankful for the care he received during his cancer journey.
Thanks to his humor and positive attitude, you’d never guess Jim Baack recently went through a battle with cancer.
In March of 2023, Jim wasn’t feeling quite himself.
“Almost two months before being diagnosed I was getting unusually tired and weak, mostly when doing more physical work,” said Avera patient, Jim Baack. “Then a few weeks later, I had a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop, so after about an hour, I went to the emergency room in Le Mars, and they finally got it stopped.”
“I actually had a blood test not related to this in Sioux Center and the next day they called me and said it was unusually low for my white blood cell count so then they wanted me to come back and do a teleconference,” said Baack.
A few days later, he found out he had leukemia.
“Eventually we got to his diagnosis which is acute promyelocytic leukemia, a relatively uncommon cancer. For reference we have about 20,000 new cases per year of something called acute myeloid leukemia; his disease represents 5% of all of those,” said Xavier Andrade-Gonzalez, MD, with Avera Medical Group Hematology, Transplant and Cellular Therapy. “We don’t know entirely what causes it. We know it’s associated with a mutation that interferes with the normal maturation process of a stem cell, from a stem cell to an immune cell, this mutation disrupts that and produces an accumulation of cancer cells that can lead to some complications.”
After talking with Dr. Andrade-Gonzalez, they determined how they would fight his cancer.
“It’s one of the major breakthroughs in the treatment of this disease. Five to 10 years ago we would have treated with conventional chemotherapy. Now, these two drugs are not chemotherapy on their own, they are what we call differentiation agents. They target this mutation and fix the problem without the need of chemotherapy,” said Andrade-Gonzalez.
As part of that treatment Jim would need to stay in the hospital for five weeks. He was thankful for everyone’s care, at each level of the hospital.
“I was very confident in Dr. Andrade, I knew he had the right treatment for me, just can’t say enough good about him and his staff,” said Baack. “From the kitchen people who pretty much knew what I wanted, it was usually biscuits and gravy, and the people that would come in and clean my room, just everybody.”
He also credits his family's dedication and his sense of humor for helping him get through this tough time.
“They were there the whole time, one of the hardest things I ever had to do was deliver the news of my diagnosis to them. It was devastating, but they were my biggest supporters, they were there, they came on weekends, and during the week,” said Baack. “If you can have humor in your life, for me that’s a gift I have. I have a plaque at home that says ‘laugh at yourself for a lifetime of free entertainment,’ and that's pretty much what I live by.”
After a few more months of treatment, Jim can now say he’s in remission.
“He is doing great, we have to keep monitoring his disease even after treatment, thankfully every time after we check he continues to be in remission, all his blood counts have normalized,” said Dr. Andrade-Gonzalez.
“Look at me, I’m a specimen here of health, I feel good,” said Baack.
