Chicago surgeon removes 15-pound tumor after Michigan woman refused surgery at home
Chicago surgeon removes 15-pound tumor after Michigan woman refused surgery at home
A Michigan woman says an appointment a few weeks ago with a suburban Chicago doctor was her last hope to try to beat her cancer.
CHICAGO - Warning: Some of the medical pictures in this report may be disturbing.
CHICAGO - A Michigan woman says an appointment a few weeks ago with a suburban Chicago doctor was her last hope to try to beat her cancer.
To win that fight, he’d have to do some heavy lifting — as Natalie Bomke explains in a Fox 32 special report.
"Worse than being pregnant"
What we know:
"I feel a hundred percent," said patient Julie Camarillo.
Julie feels like herself again. But until a few weeks ago, the 50-year-old felt like she was constantly pregnant.
"It was kind of worse than being pregnant. It was a lot of weight on me," she said.
That’s because she had a 15-pound tumor in her stomach.
"The tumor, 60 centimeters in size, weighed 15 and a half pounds," said Dr. Malcolm Bilimoria, a surgical oncologist at Endeavor Health Northwest Community Hospital.
A second opinion, 300 miles away
The backstory:
Bilimoria stepped up to take out the liposarcoma in Julie’s abdomen. It’s a rare type of soft tissue cancer.
Julie and her husband Frank drove over 300 miles from St. Clair Shores, Michigan in mid-May to see Bilimoria after they got this news from her doctors back home.
"The doctor said that he couldn't perform a surgery on me, that it was too entangled and everything," Julie said.
"It was pressing on the stomach, and it was causing her not to be able to eat so well. She's actually losing weight, vomiting many times a day," said Bilimoria.
Bilimoria says the tumor was also pressing on a number of important blood vessels in Julie’s abdomen.
"These are blood vessels you cannot live without. The aorta, the inferior vena cava, these are blood vessels that are crucial to life," he said.
"At this point, it was either surgery or hospice care. And certainly at 50 we didn't want to try that," Bilimoria added.
The stakes: major blood vessels and a life on the line
What they're saying:
Being from Chicago, Julie’s husband had a cousin who said she knew a guy who could help.
"One of her good friends from high school, her dad was a surgeon, and asked if she could share Julie's medical condition with them, and of course I said absolutely," Frank said. "And she got back to me the next day and said hey, you know this this is actually his specialty."
Bilimoria knew it was a risky surgery but was not afraid to take it on.
"She still wanted to try and I wanted to try for her and one of the things I like about being a surgical oncologist, particularly with difficult tumors in the abdomen is I get a chance to meet people who are fighters," Bilimoria said.
"I felt like if I could get it off the important blood vessels within the abdomen, that was really the trickiest part of the surgery, that we could get this thing out. That we could get this thing out with what’s called ‘clear margins,’" he added.
Four and a half hours, one outcome
At the end of May, Julie had surgery at Northwest Community Hospital.
Together, for four and a half hours, Bilimoria and his physician assistant, Katie Weiner worked meticulously to untangle the tumor from Julie's abdomen.
They did it without damaging any of the important blood vessels and checked the surrounding tissue to see if the cancer had spread.
Her margins were clear.
'You never know who might know someone who can help’
What's next:
"I said listen, nobody knows for sure what we're going to find in there. We have no idea, but if we, the scans aren't lying and if my clinical experience that tells me anything. I think we're gonna be able to get this out and of course it's the first time that she heard from anybody that we're gonna try to make her tumor-free," Bilimoria said.
Julie's cancer first appeared in 2015 and then again in 2017. Each time, she had surgery to remove the tumor, it came back.
This time is different.
"I'm very hopeful. Nobody can predict the future, but this is the first time she's had a completely margin negative resection," Bilimoria said.
Julie and Frank are now back in Michigan with their 19-year-old son. Before she left, Julie had this to say.
"The message is to get a second opinion, definitely. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't reach out to him. He said that I probably would have been dead by Christmas. You never know who's got connections who you could be talking to that knows somebody like this that could help you," she said.
Dig deeper:
We asked Bilimoria if he's ever had a case like this before, and he said, "Yes."
He says he performed a similar surgery earlier this year while in Bolivia on a medical mission trip in which he removed a 22-pound tumor.
The Source: Reporting by FOX 32 Chicago special projects team; Interview with Dr. Malcolm Bilimoria and patient Julie Camarillo.