Paul Kimelman, 77, was at a crossroads no one wants to be at. He was faced with having to make a medical decision that would negatively impact his life, no matter what he chose. A tumor wrapped around his spine and had grown dangerously close to his spinal cord, and the doctors he met with were stumped.
Specifically, an MRI showed that Kimelman had an aggressive hemangioma, which is a non-cancerous tumor made of an abnormal cluster of blood cells. “An aggressive hemangioma is one that grows,” Kimelman explains. Doctors told Kimelman that if the hemangioma continued to grow, he would become incontinent and paralyzed from the waist down.
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The problem was that the doctors Kimelman met with in his home state of Florida said an operation was too risky. “They told me it would require two neurosurgeons to perform the surgery and it would be very bloody. The hemangioma was located in an area that they wouldn’t be able to see very well, and it could result in a lot of nerve damage. The surgery would require putting a metal rod and screws in my back, and they said the recovery would be very long and painful, taking up to two years to recover,” he says.
What should he do? Face a risky, painful surgery or do nothing and risk paralysis and incontinence? Hoping for a third option, Kimelman turned to ChatGPT.
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A Search for Answers
Kimelman’s health journey started in September 2025. “I had some stomach issues, so I went to see a gastroenterologist,” he says. The gastroenterologist recommended a CT scan, which came back normal. But the CT scan showed something surprising: Kimelman had a hemangioma (non-cancerous tumor) dangerously close to his spine. Kimelman’s doctor told him he had never seen anything like it and referred him to a neurosurgeon.
After meeting with the neurologist, Kimelman underwent an MRI so the doctor could get a more detailed look at where exactly the hemangioma was located, which ended up being T12-L1, where the thoracic spine (located in the upper/mid-back) connects to the lumbar spine (located in the lower back).
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An aggressive hemangioma in this part of the body is rare and Kimelman met with several different doctors for their advice on how to treat it. As previously mentioned, the options were bleak. Some of the doctors Kimelman met with didn’t recommend operating because the surgery was too risky and not guaranteed to work. But doing nothing meant that the hemangioma would continue to grow and could lead to paralysis.
Kimelman decided to ask ChatGPT what to do. He fed the AI chatbot all of his MRIs and pathology reports. He explained in very specific terms what his medical condition was and exactly where the hemangioma was located. He asked ChatGPT if there were any doctors that specialized in treating it. Within seconds, ChatGPT gave him a list of 10 doctors and medical institutions.
Of the list of 10, Kimelman narrowed it down to the three that seemed most experienced in treating his exact condition. One of the three medical institutions on the list was Cleveland Clinic. It highlighted brain tumor neurologist Dr. Lilyana Angelov, MD, the director of a program called Gamma Knife Center and Spine Tumor Excellence Program (STEP), which focuses on treating spinal and brain tumors using advanced, minimally invasive radiosurgery. “It had more than a 90% success rate of treating hemangiomas,” Kimelman says. In other words, it was exactly what he was looking for.
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A Life-Changing Intervention
Kimelman sent all of his medical information to Dr. Angelov’s program, and shortly afterward, someone from her office called him and arranged a video call with Dr. Angelov. Another doctor also joined the call, Dr. Samuel Chao, MD, a neurologic radiation oncologist at Cleveland Clinic.
Their optimism and confidence immediately put Kimelman at ease. “They were all smiles on the video call and they explained how the procedure worked,” he says.
Parade also talked to Dr. Angelov to learn more about the procedure. The treatment is called spine radiosurgery, which uses special technology to deliver a high dose of radiation to the hemangioma. This technology is able to target the hemangioma very precisely. It’s a quick outpatient procedure with little recovery time. “I had a patient who immediately left and went on a cruise!” Dr. Angelov says.
Even though Kimelman’s condition was rare, Dr. Angelov and Dr. Chao are experts in treating it. They were among the first people in the U.S. to ever do spine radiosurgery. They felt confident they could help Kimelman.
Kimelman flew to Cleveland Clinic, where he underwent very specific MRIs and CT scans. These scans were layered on top of each other, and from those, Dr. Angelov and Dr. Chou mapped out exactly where the radiation would be targeted to ensure that they would avoid any other parts of the body that could be damaged. It took them roughly 10 days to create this map from the roughly 200 images that were taken. While they mapped out the plan for the radiosurgery, Kimelman flew back to Florida and waited.
Once the map was ready, Kimelman flew back to Cleveland Clinic and was fitted for a cast-like bed that would fit his body while he was in the MRI machine and receiving the spine radiosurgery. In December 2025, he had the procedure. Kimelman could keep his clothes on and it only took 10 minutes—a vastly different experience than the surgery option presented to him initially by the doctors in Florida. While his hemangioma will never go away completely, as long as it isn’t dangerously close to his spine as it was before, it can remain something he lives with and will not impact his health.
While the procedure was quick, it wasn’t entirely pain-free. Afterwards, Kimelman says he experienced “pain flares,” which is a temporary, localized and very intense pain that can happen after radiation. When he experienced these flares, Kimelman called his doctors at Cleveland Clinic, who were quick to give him steroids that helped with his pain.
Kimelman stayed in Ohio one day after his procedure to make sure there were no complications. Then, he flew home to Florida. This fall, Kimelman will get another MRI, but feels confident that the procedure worked.
What To Keep in Mind When Using AI Tools To Support Your Health
If Kimelman had never turned to ChatGPT for help, he never would have been connected to Dr. Angelov and Dr. Chou, the exact doctors who were experts in treating his very rare medical condition.
When using AI tools, like ChatGPT and Gemini, it’s important to consider the risks. HIPAA, the federal health privacy law, doesn’t apply to chatbots. While OpenAI (which owns ChatGPT) does have safeguards in place to keep users’ information private, there is still a risk of uploading any personal information online.
Dr. Angelov says that it’s also important to remember that AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini pull answers from everywhere online, which includes places that may not be credible. PSA: ChatGPT is not a doctor and it shouldn’t be used to replace one.
But what Dr. Angelov says is beneficial about AI chatbots is that they can clue people in on medical experts and options they didn’t know existed. Especially for people who live in rural areas and don’t have local access to specialists, this can be life-changing. It certainly was for Kimelman, even though he lives in a metropolis.
Kimelman’s health journey also shows the importance of advocating for yourself and continuing to search for solutions. The help you need may be out there; you just need to find it.
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Sources
Hemangioma. Cleveland Clinic. All About T12-L1 (Thoracolumbar Junction). Spine-Health. Dr. Lilyana Angelov, MD, brain tumor neurologist and director of a program called Gamma Knife Center and Spine Tumor Excellence Program (STEP). A Patient Guide to Stereotactic Spine Radiosurgery. Cleveland Clinic. Privacy that puts you in control. OpenAI.Hence then, the article about how one 77 year old used chatgpt to get the medical help he needed was published today ( ) and is available on Parade ( Saudi Arabia ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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