It’s been almost a year since Aaron Scott was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
He first went into the doctor for a wound on his elbow.
“I had a wound on my elbow that wouldn’t heal for probably two months and every time I bumped it, it shot a sharp pain so I decided it was time to go to the doctor,” said Scott. “Figured while I was there I’d have them look at a lump that I had on my neck and this turned out to be skin cancer. They cut it off, we are all good there, but through many scans, ultrasounds, and biopsies, we found the medullary thyroid cancer.”
Treating Head and Neck Cancer
His next step included meeting with Avera head and neck surgeon, William Spanos, MD, who confirmed the diagnosis. To determine a treatment plan, Dr. Spanos took the case to a multi-disciplinary conference.
“We have radiologists, pathologists, experts in swallowing, experts in nutrition, radiation doctors and oncologists who help us with the chemotherapy, as well as the surgeons, and we all sit together and we look at the individual patient’s pathology results and their scans,” said Spanos.
The team decided Aaron’s best option would be surgery and six weeks of radiation. For him, remaining optimistic helped him during treatment.
“I just took it one day at a time, there’s no point in looking at all six weeks because you are only going to do one day at a time, so just do what the doctors recommend,” said Scott.
“I try to go into treatment and encourage the patient to be optimistic, ‘I’m going to be the one to beat this, everything is going to work out well for me,’ because there is no benefit to worrying or stressing about it, you just need to show up, do what your doctors or you speech pathologist or others are asking you to do and hope that you are going to do very well with the treatment,” said Spanos.
Treatment Plan Success
Aaron finished radiation and after a few months, got the news that he was cancer free.
“The wait until that scan was very, very crazy, it was a lot of feelings I didn’t even know I had, but after the scan, some of the greatest news I got ever,” said Scott.
What started out as a seemingly simple lump on the neck turned into a cancer diagnosis that Aaron never imagined. He encourages others not to overlook anything out of the ordinary.
“Quite often the story that we see is someone knew that there was a lump there or were having throat pain and just ignored it, or they felt like they had a lump in their throat and they ignored it. Go in, get checked out,” said Dr. Spanos. “When we find things that are smaller, they are easier to treat, there’s less extra treatment needed. When things are a little bit later then the treatment are larger and more complicated.”
Learn more about head and neck cancer.
