Day 52: OU Physicians (7/13)

Every year for the rest of our lives, Rennie will come back to this building. Rennie has been here countless times in the last 8 years.

This is were Dr. Medina's office is located. Dr. Medina is an otolaryngologistis, the branch of medicine that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose, throat, and head and neck disorders.

In 2002, Rennie was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

It's a story that I would like to tell.

In 2002, Rennie had trouble breathing through one side of his nostril. So he went to the doctor to get it check. They couldn't find anything wrong, so they did what Rennie calls a roto rooter (I don't know the technical term). It just cleans out the nasal cavity.

It worked...for six months. (Please forgive me if the next set of facts aren't exactly correct. I have been with Rennie for 4 years so most of this happen before me.)

The doctor assumed that the roto rooter didn't work so they decided to do it again. This time he couldn't breath out the nostril within 2 months of the second roto rooter.

It was back to the doctor.  Rennie's primary doctor couldn't find anything wrong so he was sent to a specialist. There they did call kinds of scans and evaluations. Rennie was then told he had an usual kind of cancer in his nasal cavity. A cancer that is only seen in jewelry workers who work with nickel (ironic, I know) and furniture works because of a certain kind of dust.

Rennie has never worked at either of those jobs.

Rennie had to have surgery to remove the cancer in his right nasal cavity. So what they did was cut from the bridge of his nose down and out of his lip. They opened up the side of his face to determine how bad and how far it spread within in face. They ended up taking out the zygomatic bone and the maxilla. Standing face to face with Rennie, it would be the left side of his face.

After the surgery, Rennie was a phenomenon. Dr. Medina is a teaching doctor, because this was such a rare case Dr. Medina used it as a teaching moment. Rennie explained that after his surgery, learning doctors were packed into a very small room to see the bandages removed and how the bones were cut away. Checkup after checkup, Rennie saw new learning doctors.

Rennie has a prosthetic mouth piece that he can take out. It takes the place of the two bones he had removed. It is about the size of a small fist.

He cruised through 11 months of checkups until the cancer came back. It was thought to be worse this time. Before Rennie went into surgery the second time, he was told that the cancer spread to his frontal bone. However once Dr. Medina got into the nasal cavity he determined it was nearly as bad as they thought and cutting into the frontal bone wasn't needed.

This time Rennie had to have 36 rounds of radiation. Rennie said radiation was "tiring. You were worn out by the time you were through."

After two surgeries and rounds of radiation, 11 months later the cancer came back. Now nearly as strong as the first two times but it came back. This time, however, they were able to burn out the cancer without major surgery.

Eight years after Rennie found out he had cancer, he has been cancer free for 6 years. Every year he goes back to Dr. Medina and the OU Physicians for a check up and learning doctors are always present when Rennie shows up.