As part of routine follow-up care for breast cancer radiation treatments, Nancy Grosfeld had a CAT scan each year near her Michigan home to make sure her lungs looked OK.

After one scan, her doctor called and started discussing something he noticed on her pancreas. At first, says Grosfeld, “I thought he had me confused with somebody else.” But as the conversation progressed, the doctor informed Grosfeld she had three intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs)—benign tumors that grow within the pancreas or its ducts. Left untreated, some IPMNs progress to invasive cancer.

“My doctor had trained at Johns Hopkins, and he said if I could afford to go out of town for treatment, I should go to Johns Hopkins, because they did the most research on pancreatic cancer and were the most cutting edge,” Grosfeld says. “He just raved about Dr. John Cameron.”

Grosfeld then came to Johns Hopkins every six months for a three-dimensional CAT scan to track the IPMNs. By the third year, one had tripled in size, and in November 2013, Cameron performed surgery to remove it. The lesion had some abnormal cells but would have turned malignant.

“I’m so fortunate,” Grosfeld says. “I know so many people who have died from pancreatic cancer, partly because they were diagnosed so late. Thank goodness for the X-ray technician here in Michigan and the radiologist, and thank God I met Dr. Cameron. He’s an incredible surgeon, and were it not for him, who knows where I would be.”

Grosfeld continues to see Cameron for follow-up appointments every six months but says she feels great. In recognition of the wonderful care she received at Johns Hopkins, she and her husband, James, a former CEO of Pulte Home Corp., gave $200,000 to Cameron’s pancreatic cancer research fund.

“We have more clinical and basic scientists working on pancreatic cancer than anywhere else, and we see and treat more patients than anywhere else, yet we’re making slow progress, mostly because we don’t have enough funding,” Cameron says. The Grosfelds’ gift will support younger faculty working on a broad set of studies to find tumor markers to identify pancreatic cancers earlier, he says.