Omaha College Student Prepares for Graduation 5 Years Following Leukemia Diagnosis

Alex Stowe was your typical teenager. He enjoyed watching sports – especially the New York Yankees – liked hanging out with friends and enjoyed attending Creighton Preparatory high school in Omaha, Neb. But the summer before Alex’s senior year – just as he was starting to look at colleges – everything changed. “This just kind of came out of nowhere and interrupted all that,” said Alex.

Alex’s mom, Lu Anne Pane, remembers that summer all too well. “Alex wasn’t feeling well,” said Pane. “He kept complaining his bones were aching and his cheeks hurt.” After taking her son to the doctor, Lu Anne’s worst fears as a mother were confirmed. “He came in and said ‘he has cancer.’ I said ‘cancer? How can he have cancer?’ He said ‘he has leukemia.’”

Pane initially took her son to a different hospital in Omaha. But at the urging of a friend she had him transferred to The Nebraska Medical Center, a nationally respected leukemia treatment center. “We had an appointment with Dr. Bruce Gordon,” said Pane. “We asked a few questions and immediately discovered yes, this is the place we need to be.”

But the intensive rounds of chemotherapy turned out to be some of the least of Alex’s troubles during his seven months in the hospital. He developed a yeast infection in his lungs that almost took his life. “We got a call at midnight saying ‘Lu Anne you need to come to the hospital, he’s really sick,’” said Pane. “And you can hear him in the background saying ‘mom, please come.’”

Despite the struggles Alex faced during his leukemia treatment, both he and his mom agreed the care he received here was what allowed them to get through it. “It was the best care I could have asked for,” said Alex. “Dr. Gordon was an absolutely excellent doctor. He was upfront and honest with me, while staying upbeat about things. He was like there was nothing we couldn’t deal with. It was something we were going to beat and it was going to happen.”

Alex also singled out the nursing staff during his stay. “They almost became like a second family,” he said. “When you can’t really leave your room you have to talk to anybody and they were just so understanding and so nice about everything. It was fantastic.”

Alex recently celebrated five years of being cancer free. He will graduate in May from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and will start applying to law school this fall.

“I want to sincerely say ‘thank you’ to everyone at The Nebraska Medical Center for everything they’ve done,” said Alex. “It was fantastic. It was a horrible experience and they helped me through it.”

Alex’s mom couldn’t agree more. “The care that he got – it was extraordinary.”

About The Nebraska Medical Center

With a reputation for excellence, innovation and extraordinary patient care, The Nebraska Medical Center has earned J.D. Power and Associates’ Hospital of Distinction award for inpatient services for six consecutive years. It also received the 2011 Consumer Choice Award, a mark of patient satisfaction as selected by healthcare consumers and has achieved Magnet recognition status for nursing excellence, Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leader recognition, as well as the Award of Progress from the state of Nebraska’s Edgerton Quality Awards Program.  As the teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, this 624 licensed bed academic medical center has an international reputation for providing solid organ and bone marrow transplantation services and is well known nationally and regionally for its oncology, neurology and cardiology programs.  The Nebraska Medical Center can be found online at www.nebraskamed.com.