(Bridgette here)
We met today with Dr. Bert O’Malley at Penn. He is the head of the Head and Neck Surgery Department at Penn. Tom, mom and I liked him a lot. He’s very direct yet positive. One really does feel in good hands sitting in front of him.
In short, mom has one of three types of cancerous tumors. The kind that he thinks she has is called Sinonasal Undifferentiated Carcinoma (SNUC). The other two possibilities are olfactory neuroblastoma and malignant melanoma. Additional stains will be done on the biopsy sample that was taken last week to decipher what type she has. This process will take between a week and ten days.
In the meantime, she has consults with Neurosurgery, Oncology, etc. and will also have a full body PET scan and an additional MRI of her neck. These consults will then be followed by team meetings will all experts involved to decide upon the course of treatment.
Depending upon the type of cancer, either surgery or chemotherapy will come first. If the cancer is SNUC they will have a course of chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and follow that by surgery and then radiation. If the cancer is one of the other two, surgery will come first followed by one or both of the other therapies.
The final diagnosis and course of treatment will take place in 2 -3 weeks time. In the meantime, mom will complete her course of antibiotics and prednisone and has a good supply of Percaset should she have a lot of pain.
As we were leaving Dr. O’Malley suggested we meet the patient in the next room. Mike was diagnosed 13 months ago with SNUC. He’s 58 and his tumor was bigger than mom’s. He went through chemo and that shrunk the tumor 80%. He then had surgery and followed that with radiation. Mike lives 10 minutes from mom and Tom and gave them his card and told them to call anytime.
We left the meeting and mom made all of her appointments. We were all a bit numb with all of the information. The big upside to all of this is that mom’s in terrific health – working out at the gym and dragon boating - and that will help her stay strong during the chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
Hopefully she’ll be able to let her massive support system do their job by supporting and encouraging her, utilizing their numerous intellectual and emotional resources and keeping her spirits up by making her laugh really hard. That process of letting go may just prove to be the hardest part of this situation for her
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