STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — They say every great man has a story to tell.
But this Staten Island son brings it to another level. A few years back when Rob Ricco saw his reflection in the mirror, he noticed there was a slight difference on one side of his neck compared to the other, he reported to Prevention magazine, where his story was first reported. The next morning, the Castleton Corners resident, 55 at the time, made an appointment with his physician, Dr.
Edward Levine, a doctor of internal medicine in Dongan Hills. They decided to schedule a few tests to ascertain whether or not it was something to act on. Ricco followed up with testing at Regional Radiology.
Two days later, Dr. Levine called him into the office. Ricco was suspicious that there was something wrong.
He was told tests revealed it was cancer. And with that diagnosis Ricco immediately placed a phone call to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. “It took two weeks to get in,” he recalled.
“They ran all kinds of tests and at first they thought it was lymphoma and couldn’t locate the cancer. But within a short time they learned it was in fact esophageal cancer.” Esophageal cancer is a type is malignancy arising from the esophagus, the food pipe that runs between the throat and the stomach.
Symptoms often include difficulty in swallowing and weight loss. But oftentimes, as was the case with Ricco, it doesn’t manifest any symptoms at all. Ricco said he must admit, the first doctor he saw a.