A strange Occurance

quemon
quemon Member Posts: 9
in Head and Neck Cancer #1

Hello, hoping to find someone who can help me stop worrying.  My husband had a very advanced sinus cancer 2 years ago.  Invasive squamous cell carcinoma.  The tumor had grown to attach to the brain, eye and orbit, tissue and bone.  He had an incredible life saving surgery which saw the removal of eye and orbit as well as parts of bone from the nose etc.  His recovery is nothing short of a miracle.  Now suddenly 2 years later he gets a small pimple on the free flap over the orbit/eye that was removed.  The pimple becomes a hole from which water spews when he flushes his nose.  Air freely flows through it and although a wonderful party trick, it is scary.  We are seeing the doc on Monday, but has anyone ever had this happen?  Please tell me about it.

Comments

  • longtermsurvivor
    longtermsurvivor Member Posts: 1,842 Member
    #2
    Hi Quemon

    Sorry for the worry.  Its a long weekend coming, that I know.  Nothing matches the worry of the unknown.  We've all been there from time to time.  I see from your bio that Ron had radiation too, in addition to this very radical surgery.  Obviously what he has is a fistula between the nasal cavity and the outside,  The question is simply what is the cause of this.  Your concern  is that this represents recurrent cancer, and of course that is the primary purpose of the office visiti on  Monday.  Anything that devitalizes a small area of tissue can cause this, and a free flap has marginal blood flow to begin with.  When you compound this with radiation, it is possible that an area like this necroses just because it lost enough blood supply  that this just happened.  There was a poster here a year ago who's husband had the nasal cartillage break down, forming a hole between the two sides of his nose following radiation.  No recurrent cancer was found; it was rather a delayed radiation effect.  I know this does very little to reassure you, and I'm sorry about that.  Monday should answer the question for you, and I wish you two the best.

     

    Pat

  • quemon
    quemon Member Posts: 9
    #3
    longtermsurvivor said:

    Hi Quemon

    Sorry for the worry.  Its a long weekend coming, that I know.  Nothing matches the worry of the unknown.  We've all been there from time to time.  I see from your bio that Ron had radiation too, in addition to this very radical surgery.  Obviously what he has is a fistula between the nasal cavity and the outside,  The question is simply what is the cause of this.  Your concern  is that this represents recurrent cancer, and of course that is the primary purpose of the office visiti on  Monday.  Anything that devitalizes a small area of tissue can cause this, and a free flap has marginal blood flow to begin with.  When you compound this with radiation, it is possible that an area like this necroses just because it lost enough blood supply  that this just happened.  There was a poster here a year ago who's husband had the nasal cartillage break down, forming a hole between the two sides of his nose following radiation.  No recurrent cancer was found; it was rather a delayed radiation effect.  I know this does very little to reassure you, and I'm sorry about that.  Monday should answer the question for you, and I wish you two the best.

     

    Pat

    Strange....a hole in the skin flap 2 years later!

    Hi Pat and thank you for your note.  I am also optimistic this is some sort of skin breakdown from the effects of radiation.  Goodness knows the radiation did damage to everything!  It will be a long weekend in wait, but I will stay positive and hope for the best!

  • quemon
    quemon Member Posts: 9
    #4
    longtermsurvivor said:

    Hi Quemon

    Sorry for the worry.  Its a long weekend coming, that I know.  Nothing matches the worry of the unknown.  We've all been there from time to time.  I see from your bio that Ron had radiation too, in addition to this very radical surgery.  Obviously what he has is a fistula between the nasal cavity and the outside,  The question is simply what is the cause of this.  Your concern  is that this represents recurrent cancer, and of course that is the primary purpose of the office visiti on  Monday.  Anything that devitalizes a small area of tissue can cause this, and a free flap has marginal blood flow to begin with.  When you compound this with radiation, it is possible that an area like this necroses just because it lost enough blood supply  that this just happened.  There was a poster here a year ago who's husband had the nasal cartillage break down, forming a hole between the two sides of his nose following radiation.  No recurrent cancer was found; it was rather a delayed radiation effect.  I know this does very little to reassure you, and I'm sorry about that.  Monday should answer the question for you, and I wish you two the best.

     

    Pat

    Unintended Nose Hole

    We are back from red shoe land (Docs) and the results are.....inconclusive! Hmmmm, much concern was voiced about the "hole" in the side of Ron's upper eye/nose. There is a massive infection that has worked it's way out through the skin?  Strange indeed.  Concern about what started it and just what is going on. CT scan next week and blood work, 20 pounds of antibiotics then back in a month for some sort of "exploratory" clean up surgery. This does not sound like a fun adventure exactly. Also concern about the lungs so CT scan there as well, again I assume precautionary as Ron has nodes in both lungs, liver, kidneys and adrenal glands, found in July PET.  Once we "pass" all this, we can talk about the nose job we went for. Geez, it all sounds a wee bit scary to me.

  • D Lewis
    D Lewis Member Posts: 1,581 Member
    #5
    quemon said:

    Unintended Nose Hole

    We are back from red shoe land (Docs) and the results are.....inconclusive! Hmmmm, much concern was voiced about the "hole" in the side of Ron's upper eye/nose. There is a massive infection that has worked it's way out through the skin?  Strange indeed.  Concern about what started it and just what is going on. CT scan next week and blood work, 20 pounds of antibiotics then back in a month for some sort of "exploratory" clean up surgery. This does not sound like a fun adventure exactly. Also concern about the lungs so CT scan there as well, again I assume precautionary as Ron has nodes in both lungs, liver, kidneys and adrenal glands, found in July PET.  Once we "pass" all this, we can talk about the nose job we went for. Geez, it all sounds a wee bit scary to me.

    One step at a time

    Hang in there.  it's your only option at this point. Here's hoping it becomes less scary.

    Deb

  • Pam M
    Pam M Member Posts: 2,196
    #6
    quemon said:

    Unintended Nose Hole

    We are back from red shoe land (Docs) and the results are.....inconclusive! Hmmmm, much concern was voiced about the "hole" in the side of Ron's upper eye/nose. There is a massive infection that has worked it's way out through the skin?  Strange indeed.  Concern about what started it and just what is going on. CT scan next week and blood work, 20 pounds of antibiotics then back in a month for some sort of "exploratory" clean up surgery. This does not sound like a fun adventure exactly. Also concern about the lungs so CT scan there as well, again I assume precautionary as Ron has nodes in both lungs, liver, kidneys and adrenal glands, found in July PET.  Once we "pass" all this, we can talk about the nose job we went for. Geez, it all sounds a wee bit scary to me.

    Argh!!

    "Inconclusive" is hard.  I'm sure time is crawling for you all right now.  Hope the antibiotics do their job quickly, so you all can go to the next step with the infection a thing of the past.

Discussion Boards