PHOENIX — Alison O’Neill has a zest for life that is immediately noticed when you meet her.
For five years that zest has been minimized after noticing a small bump on her right cheek.
“It started in January of 2017, tiny, tiny little spot that any of us would have thought of as, you know, clogged oil gland or blemish,” said O’Neill.
So, she went to see a dermatologist, who looked it over, said it was nothing and planned to monitor it. However, three and a half years later that small bump started getting bigger and it was becoming more noticeable.
“Cosmetically, I'd like to have it removed." said O'Neill.
In order to remove it, her dermatologist did a biopsy and determined it was a malignant tumor and didn’t think it was life-threatening. However, she then went to the Mayo Clinic, where they did a second biopsy to try and confirm the first diagnosis, but it came back as angiosarcoma.
“Everything that you've known stops, it changes, said a shocked O’Neill. “All the proverbial sayings that surrounded, the rugs pulled right out from underneath you. It's devastating. Angiosarcoma does not bode well, from diagnosis.
According to the Mayo Clinic, angiosarcoma is a rare type of cancer that forms in the lining of the blood and lymph vessels. The statistical survival span with angiosarcoma is eighteen months.
“They said, get in here immediately. They handled things incredibly quickly,” according to O’Neill.
“Knowing how aggressive these are in that timing and getting them off sooner rather than later can really be significant in someone's likelihood of surviving,” said Brittany Howard M.D. We kind of met each other, talked about what the plan was and I literally uttered, do you want to do this today?”
That day, Dr. Brittany Howard, head and neck surgeon and facial reconstruction expert at Mayo Clinic, removed the tumor saying, “These can be so dangerous, you have to take wide edges around them. We took off approximately the size of the baseball off her right cheek as far as the actual diameter of a circle goes. And then all the way down to the facial muscles.”
Although Alison was immediately relieved, once she was able to look in the mirror and see the hole in her face, she couldn’t help but ask the obvious question.
“You look in the mirror, and on the one hand, you're thinking, I'm so grateful for life, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to live and I know that this gave me that, that it afforded me the opportunity to live a longer life,’ said Alison. “On the other hand, you're looking at your face thinking, what am I gonna look like?
However, Dr. Howard was far from finished. After testing to make sure they got all of the tumor, the reconstruction began.
They had to recruit skin from her face, neck and collar area, then it required one hundred stitches to build her face back.
Dr. Howard said, “She went through a big surgery to basically elevate all of the skin she had across her face, her neck and all the way down to basically her collarbone to then be able to move that up and actually do a reconstruction on this right cheek.”
Alison then had to endure several painful rounds of radiation.
Then Dr. Howard used a regenerative medicine approach to healing, to help the recovery. Two years later and O’Neill is counting her blessings, she is not another statistic of Angiosarcoma. She knows it’s all thanks to the Mayo Clinic and Dr. Howard.
“As I fight and claw my way back, some days are good, some days aren't so good. But today, I feel more myself than I have in a long time. I even said to my husband the other day that there are actually moments when I forget this happened to my face. So, I'm just beyond grateful,” said a glowing O’Neill.
