Owensboro Health | Lift | September 2018

When Charles Mattingly found out he had prostate cancer, he approached it like an engineer. “My way of dealing with it was researching the disease to find what was going to be best for me for a treatment program,” Charles said. “I've been working in engineering applications all my life and engineers are realists.” Charles holds a degree in chemistry from Brescia University and spent his career working for General Electric and MPD in Owensboro. His specialty was process engineering, coming up with cost-effective, efficient ways to take designs and plans from the drawing board and bring them to life on the factory floor. His past projects include the ceramic-to-metal seals on batteries that went up on the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope, as well as electrical connectors used in x-ray machines made by GE and Varian Medical Systems. A cross-country search Charles’s cancer was slow-growing, so he had time to research. Over the course of 18 months, he spoke face-to-face or over the phone with doctors in Colorado, Michigan, Tennessee and Texas. His son is a colorectal surgeon in Flint, Michigan, so Charles reached out through that network of resources. Surgery to remove his prostate was not a good option because he has myasthenia gravis, a disease where the body’s immune system attacks the connections between nerves and muscles. Surgery alone would be difficult because of the disease, but one of the medications that he takes for it also makes healing from surgery difficult. A solution in his backyard After 18 months, follow-up testing showed that Charles’s cancer was becoming more dangerous. Charles’ urologist advised him that since surgery was not an option, radiation therapy would be a better choice. That urologist also advised him that he could get that treatment from Dr. Ryan Faught at the Owensboro Health Mitchell Memorial Cancer Center. At Owensboro Health’s Mitchell Memorial Cancer Center, Charles was treated using the TrueBeam ® linear accelerator. His course of treatment started in January 2018 and he received the last of 44 treatments in March 2018. His cancer is now gone and he never experienced any side effects doctors told him he might have. Move More Canc r Ca An engineer’s nationwide search brought him home for cancer care Contributing to success Charles realized as he lay on the table for his first treatment that the TrueBeam machine is made by Varian. That means the work he did to develop the electrical connectors years before had a hand in the evolution of the technology that saved his life. “I felt like I had a little ownership of that piece of equipment that was going to be treating me,” Charles said. “I love to know that I had some part in this.” To learn more about our national-quality cancer care, visit OwensboroHealth.org/YouCan . “I’m very pleased with the procedure and the outcome.”—Charles Mattingly OwensboroHealth.org  3 The research challenge of his life Charles Mattingly received lifesaving radiation treatment at Owensboro Health’s Mitchell Memorial Cancer Center. Charles Mattingly was pleasantly surprised that the care he needed was so close to home.