Two Cancers, One Unified Multidisciplinary Care Team
Joyce Gabbert came to Mayo Clinic for treatment of a rare form of head and neck cancer. But she soon learned that wasn’t the only cancer diagnosis she was facing. At that point, a coordinated care team came together to create a treatment plan that put Joyce on the path to becoming cancer-free.
It all started with a stuffy nose. “After a week or so, I thought I must have a sinus infection because it just wasn’t going away,” Joyce Gabbert says.
Joyce
decided to seek the medical counsel of a nurse practitioner. “I told him
that I thought I must have a sinus infection, so he gave me an antibiotic,”
she says. “But he also said that if it didn’t get better, I should make an
appointment with an otorhinolaryngology specialist.”
After
another month without any improvement, that’s what Joyce did. “I’d
actually gotten worse during that time,” she says. “In fact, I’d
worsened to the point where I had a runny nose that I couldn’t stop. It got so
bad that I’d have to continually pack my nose with Kleenex just so I could
continue to function at work.”
When
the day of her otorhinolaryngology, or ENT, appointment came, Joyce was hoping
for a quick diagnosis and an easy fix. But as the appointment went on, she
realized she wasn’t going to get either.
“The ENT I saw thought I might be suffering from nasal polyps and that I might need corrective surgery,” she says. “But they only do their surgeries at a hospital that’s not very convenient for me location-wise, so I thought, ‘I’m just going to switch ENTs and get a second opinion.'”
Joyce found another ENT specialist closer to her home in Burnsville, Minnesota. He began her evaluation with a CT scan. “When he looked at the results, he knew right away it wasn’t nasal polyps because the problem wasn’t uniform. It was concentrated to one side of my nose,” Joyce says. “At that point, he inserted a small scope into my nose, so he could get a better look at what was going on.”
What
appeared to be going on didn’t look good. The physician suspected Joyce had a
tumor. He recommended surgery to investigate further and determine if it was
cancer. “That’s when I started to worry,” Joyce says.
From worry to action
The surgery uncovered a rare form of head and neck cancer known as a sinonasal malignancy. Joyce’s doctor suggested she seek care at a larger medical center and recommended several, including Mayo Clinic. “I thought: ‘My goodness, Mayo Clinic is one of the best — if not the best — hospitals in the world. Why would I not go there?'” Joyce says.
“(Dr. Choby) is so personable and compassionate, and you just know he truly cares about his patients. You’re not a clinic number to him. You’re a person.”
Joyce Gabbert
At Mayo Clinic, Joyce met Garret Choby, M.D. in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery. “He’s wonderful,” she says. “He’s so personable and compassionate, and you just know he truly cares about his patients. You’re not a clinic number to him. You’re a person.”
Dr. Choby moved quickly to assess Joyce’s condition and determine next steps. That assessment revealed another unpleasant surprise. “We did a PET scan with Joyce before her surgery to ensure her tumor hadn’t spread. During that scan, a lesion lit up in her left lung,” Dr. Choby says. “We then had to biopsy that to ensure it wasn’t a spread of her sinonasal cancer. It wasn’t, but it did turn out to be a second primary cancer of her left lung.”
Joyce was stunned. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “I felt fine. I had no symptoms of lung cancer whatsoever. I would have never known I had this cancer, as well, without that PET scan.”
All hands on deck
Dr.
Choby consulted with Mayo Clinic thoracic surgeon Stephen
Cassivi, M.D. Now dealing with two cancers instead
of one, they had to decide which took top priority.
“This is part of the beauty of Mayo Clinic,” Dr. Cassivi says. “I was able to meet with Dr. Choby, and we discussed Joyce’s different medical issues. We felt that her lung cancer was able to be put on the back burner a bit because it was an early-stage cancer, so we thought it would be best to deal with it after Dr. Choby took care of her sinonasal tumor and after she finished her corresponding radiation treatments.”
With
that plan in place, Dr. Choby then brought in fellow ENT surgeon Eric
Moore, M.D., and neurosurgeon Michael
Link, M.D., as well as medical oncologist Katharine
Price, M.D.
“For
patients like Joyce, who have tumors in this location — right at the base of the
skull where the brain cavity is separated from the nasal cavity — we always
work as a team at Mayo Clinic,” Dr. Link says.
Before
moving forward with surgery to remove the tumor, the team discussed the
possibility of a craniotomy — taking out part of Joyce’s forehead to allow
access to the tumor. Instead, they were able to perform surgery through her
nose, and a craniotomy wasn’t necessary.
“I love their coordination of care, and how everyone is on the same team and the same page at all times.”
Joyce Gabbert
“We
were very pleased with that,” Dr. Link says. “Working together with
Drs. Choby and Moore, we all felt good that we had the right plan in place, and
we were able to execute that plan the way we wanted to.”
All
three surgeons were involved in the complex procedure, which took more than
eight hours. When it was over, they were confident in the result, as was Joyce.
“They did such a wonderful job,” Joyce says. “Drs. Choby, Moore,
Link and Price all worked together to get all of that cancer out of there for
me.”
With her initial surgery complete, Joyce spent the next six weeks in Rochester undergoing proton beam therapy treatments before meeting up, once again, with Dr. Cassivi.
“Once
Joyce finished her radiation treatments, we rechecked everything to make sure nothing
had changed,” Dr. Cassivi says. “I then brought her back into the
operating room to do a minimally invasive removal of the lower left lobe of her
lung to remove her early-stage lung cancer.”
Joyce’s
second cancer surgery went just as well as the first. “I can’t say enough
about my surgeons and my entire care teams at Mayo Clinic,” Joyce says.
“In addition to everything else, I love their coordination of care, and
how everyone is on the same team and the same page at all times.”
Partners in compassionate care
Joyce
also was pleased and relieved to find Mayo Clinic’s coordinated care went beyond
just her, as the patient, and extended to her family, as well, including her
daughter, who came to many of Joyce’s Mayo Clinic appointments.
“She
was, of course, very afraid throughout much of what I had to go through. She
asked Drs. Choby, Moore, Link, Price and Cassivi so many questions about
everything. They were all so patient, and they took the time to show her my
scans and explain what everything was and what everything meant,” Joyce
says. “They went out of their way time and time again to reassure her that
my prognosis was good. That was a tremendous help because when it was coming
from me, I think she thought she was getting it through rose-colored glasses. But
hearing it from them, she took that seriously.”
“The ability for all of us to work in concert as partners on the same team working on Joyce and her daughter’s behalf is, to me, what Mayo Clinic is all about.”
Stephen Cassivi, M.D.
The
team took providing that kind of coordinated, compassionate care seriously, as
well. “It was great,” Dr. Cassivi says. “The ability for all of
us to work in concert as partners on the same team working on Joyce and her
daughter’s behalf is, to me, what Mayo Clinic is all about.”
And
that’s why Joyce — whose scans now show to be cancer-free on all fronts — says
she’ll continue driving to Mayo Clinic for her medical care.
“I
feel so blessed to live so close to Rochester and Mayo Clinic. Right when you
walk into Mayo, you get this comforting feeling that you’re in the best
possible hospital in the world,” she says. “My care teams at Mayo
Clinic saved my life. I have no doubt about that. The skill and compassion of
Drs. Choby, Moore, Link, Cassivi, Price, and everyone else up and down my care
teams, are truly remarkable and so very much appreciated.”
HELPFUL LINKS
- Read more about head and neck cancer and lung cancer treatment at Mayo Clinic.
- Learn more about the departments of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, Thoracic Surgery and Neurosurgery.
- Check out the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center.
- Explore Mayo Clinic.
- Request an appointment.