Benefit pasta dinner to help Austintown grad with medical expenses
AUSTINTOWN
Family and friends of Austintown native Katherine “Katie” Sokol’s streamed into St. Anne Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church on Saturday afternoon to enjoy a benefit pasta dinner to help Sokol with medical expenses associated with unusual upcoming surgery that involves removing her pancreas.
Sokol, 27, needs to have her pancreas removed because it was damaged by cystic fibrosis that she had since birth but went undiagnosed until she was 25. As a result of her nonfunctioning pancreas, she has also developed diabetes.
Sokol described the surgery, which she said is technically not a transplant because though her pancreas will be removed, it will not be replaced.
Instead, a team of about a dozen surgeons at Cleveland Clinic plan to remove Sokol’s pancreas, an organ about the size of a hand behind the lower part of the stomach, harvest islet cells from the defective organ and give them a new home in her liver where they will replicate their function in the pancreas, which is to produce insulin.
“Pancreatic islets are tiny clusters of cells scattered throughout the pancreas. The islets contain several types of cells, including beta cells, that produce the hormone insulin, which helps cells throughout the body absorb glucose from the bloodstream and use it for energy,” according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Sokol said she’s in the process of being extensively evaluated for suitability for the surgery in one-on-one meetings with her surgical team.
She doesn’t know when her surgery will be done, but said: “The sooner, the better.”
Sokol and her husband, Timothy H., have two sons: Timothy J., 7, and Johnathan, 3.
A graduate of Austintown High School, where she ran the 100- and 200-meter yard dashes on the track team, Sokol is a daughter of Dana and Charles Riley of McDonald, and sister of Jo-Anna Riley of Austintown.
Sokol and her husband said they are thankful for family and friends and other members of Team Sokol, and Ryan Sheridan, owner of Braking Point Recovery Center, who sponsored Saturday’s benefit.