A Miracle in the Making: How Hope Redefined Mark Ruegg’s Experience With Pancreatic Cancer
A Miracle in the Making: How Hope Redefined Mark Ruegg’s Experience With Pancreatic Cancer
Contributing Writer
Julia Brabant
September 3, 2024
Diagnosed: October 2023
Current Status: Currently cancer free and focused on maintaining his health
When Mark Ruegg’s doctors diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer, they gave him virtually no hope, deeming him inoperable and incurable and recommending he pursue palliative care. Instead of simply accepting this, Mark chose to instead pursue other avenues and opinions, reaching out to multiple medical specialists and turning to a combination of Eastern and Western medicine to treat his condition. Mark’s unconventional approach to tackling pancreatic cancer seems to be working, with doctors now seeing significant improvements in Mark’s health that they consider to be nothing short of miraculous.
Mark, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Buffy, and works as a “child wrangler” in the advertising industry, had just returned home from a vacation in Lake Havasu when severe stomach pains landed him in the emergency room. ER doctors performed a scan of his abdomen, but the scan lacked “contrast,” or a special kind of dye, so it didn’t identify a tumor in Mark’s pancreas.
Instead, ER doctors determined that Mark’s pancreas and liver looked “unremarkable,” so they thought he was facing a bout of pancreatitis and treated it as such. The scan did, however, indicate the presence of a kidney stone, so they directed Mark to a urologist for additional care.
After treating the kidney stone, Mark continued to experience pain and drop weight. He turned to a gastroenterologist, who ordered an MRI. The MRI revealed a 4-cm tumor on the head of Mark’s pancreas that had metastasized to his lymph nodes and liver. The GI directed Mark to an oncologist, who diagnosed him with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“He didn’t give me a very good outlook,” Mark said. “That was probably the lowest point of this whole endeavor. He had a look of defeat in his eyes; it was the biggest gut punch I’ve ever received.”
Rather than adopt his doctor’s same sense of defeat, Mark instead called upon his seven siblings to help him find an alternative care approach. Mark’s sister-in-law wound up directing him to Seena Magowitz Foundation Founder & CEO Roger Magowitz, who called Mark within a day.
“Mark, that oncologist doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Roger said to Mark. “I can give you the names of 5-, 10- and even 20+-year survivors; just say the word and I’ll put you in contact with them today.”
This represented a huge turning point for Mark, who, for the first time since his diagnosis, began to feel as if survival might be possible.
“That was the beginning; he was my ‘four-minute mile,’ the one that showed me survival was possible,” Mark said. “Once I believed that, I jumped in with my whole body and have stayed there ever since.”
Invigorated, Mark sought second opinions from six different doctors, one a specialist for his specific type of pancreatic cancer. He met this physician through the Healthnetwork Foundation, which links CEOs and business leaders with top-ranked hospitals and doctors. Most, or close to about 95%, of people with pancreatic cancer have adenocarcinoma, while roughly 5% have neuroendocrine tumors, or NETs. Just 1% have neuroendocrine carcinoma, or NEC, which was Mark’s diagnosis.
All six of the doctors Mark contacted recommended a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Mark ultimately chose to work with the NET and NEC specialist and started undergoing chemotherapy in December 2023.
The chemo proved effective pretty quickly. A subsequent PET scan didn’t reveal any areas of concern in Mark’s pancreas or lymph nodes, and his liver, which had lots of legions before chemotherapy, showed improvement, too, with the masses there reducing in size.
Encouraged, Mark continued chemo, but his care team recommended he stop after six rounds, when the treatments would likely become too hard on his body. He continues immunotherapy today, having treatments once a month.
In addition to having immunotherapy, which uses an individual’s immune system to fight cancer or other diseases, Mark also began exploring a range of holistic and alternative treatments. He now practices yoga, meditation and similar efforts to support his health and help his body fight pancreatic cancer.
He also took things several steps further, taking time off work and going so far as to completely overhaul his diet and lifestyle.
“I basically went into this healing bubble,” he said, noting that he cut out alcohol, sugar and processed foods, among other sacrifices. He also stopped watching the news entirely and began reading voraciously and learning everything he could about other people who’d overcome cancer.
“I read “Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds” and “Cured: Strengthen Your Immune System and Heal Your Life,” and thought, ‘This is what I want,’” he said, of the books by Kelly A. Turner, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Rediger, M.D., respectively. “I needed validation that radical remissions were possible.”
Mark’s latest scans provided further validation, failing to detect tumors in in his pancreas or lymph nodes. His liver, too, looked almost as good as new. Feeling encouraged by this progress, Mark asked if he might be able to have his stent, which is a small tube that keeps the bile duct open, removed, as it kept causing complications.
Mark’s metal stent was causing infections, so Mark’s medical team swapped it out for a plastic one. The plastic one needed replacement every three months, though, prompting Mark to request its removal.
Mark’s doctor told him that wasn’t really the protocol, but since he had to replace the existing plastic stent anyway, he’d take a look around so they’d have a better idea of what they were dealing with.
When Mark came to, his doctor was standing over him, grinning from ear to ear.
“Mark, it’s a miracle. I can’t find it,” the doctor said of Mark’s tumor. “In the course of my career, I’ve never seen a tumor disappear from the pancreas like this.”
The doctor concurred that, because of the positive progress, he could remove Mark’s stent without replacing it with a new one. Mark shared the happy news with his oncologist, who maintained a poker face initially. After concurring with Mark’s other doctor who decided not to replace the stent, though, the oncologist couldn’t help but express his amazement.
“I don’t have a stent, and I don’t currently have any cancer in me,” Mark said. “My wife keeps saying, ‘I’m happy, but we don’t know which of what’s working [Eastern or Western treatments and techniques], so we can’t stop any of it.”
Mark also acknowledges the unpredictable nature of his disease.
“I know it can come back and come back stronger, but, you know, I’m just taking it one day at a time and enjoying every moment when I feel good,” he said. “If it does come back, then we’ll deal with it then.”
While Mark may not know exactly what his future holds, he knows he has a solid support system of family members, friends and even the children he works with on set.
“When this all came out, these kids, along with so many others in the industry, sent pictures, letters, notes, words of encouragement – I started to get inundated,” Mark said. “I put it all on one wall in my house; we called it the “Positivity Wall.” It outgrew that, and now we have an entire “Positivity House.” From the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed, I see love and positivity, and this has definitely influenced where I am today.”
Mark also recalls a particularly poignant card he received from one of the kids he’d worked with, an 8-year-old who sent a card depicting a chess set with two players: Mark and cancer. The card showed Mark’s image about to take cancer’s king alongside the words, “Your move, Mark – what are you going to do?”
For the time being, Mark plans to continue his regular checkups and will continue to rely on a combination of traditional and Eastern medicine to maintain his health and help guard against a potential recurrence. He’s also begun networking with other people with pancreatic cancer, both by joining support groups and attending the Seena Magowitz Foundation’s most recent Power of Us annual fundraiser in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“It’s so nice to talk to survivors; so many of them said cancer was kind of a blessing, and that it can change people for the better, and I have to agree – my developing cancer has changed me in so many ways,” Mark said. He also mentioned how their stories gave him a renewed sense of hope.
“When you see these long-term survivors talk, you see yourself in them,” he said. “You think, ‘That could be me.’ It’s very inspiring.”
Mark also expressed gratitude for his wife, Buffy, and everyone else who adopts a caregiver role for someone they love facing cancer.
“My wife is a godsend,” he said. “Talk about stress – caregivers are angels; they take this on even more so than the patient, because the patient gets all the love and attention, while the caregiver does all the work and takes all the crap. They’re amazing people, and they need to take time to themselves to destress.”
On that note, Mark also noted just how much his own efforts to eliminate stress after his diagnosis have contributed to his own well-being.
“Personally, I feel that even more so than diet or environment, one of the leading cancer causes today is stress,” he said. “Until I went into a healing bubble, I didn’t even realize how stressed I was. I’d nap to the news, and it was just constant noise and fear. When I withdrew from all that, I experienced a breath of fresh air.”
Mark also said his health hurdles have helped him recognize what really matters in life – and what doesn’t.
“We’re so caught up in the noise from the past and the fear of the future that we forget about the sweet spot of the present moment,” he said.
Rather than fear the future, Mark chooses to make the most of it, planning a series of trips for him and his wife to take in the coming months and years.
“My wife and I have a saying – if it’s on the calendar, it has to happen,” Mark said. “I can’t die before it happens.”