Cancer stole HALF my smile – I can feel hairs growing inside my mouth after my leg and foot were used to rebuild my face
A WOMAN had her face rebuilt with her leg and foot after she lost half her smile to an aggressive cancer that started in her mouth.
Sarah Susak, 48, was diagnosed with head and neck cancer after a “sharp electrical current” zinged through her mouth after giving her husband a peck in 2017.
The mum, who had given birth to a daughter a year and a half earlier after gruelling IVF, was told she’d need to have her face and palate taken apart to stop the aggressive cancer from spreading to the rest of her body.
Surgeons then used her leg and foot to reconstruct her palate, leaving her with half a smile and hairs growing inside her mouth – but a smile nonetheless.
“When I was told they were going to do open face surgery to remove the tumour, I was told I would lose my eye and my hearing,” the 48-year-old mum-of-one explained.
“I gave them permission to do whatever they needed to save me. I came out with missing teeth as they took half my palate.
“They used the skin from my leg to build my new palate – I can feel the leg hairs still growing inside my mouth.
“They used my fibula in my leg to rebuild my jaw and veins from my feet to connect muscles.
“It was amazing how many different parts of my body they used to rebuild my face.”
Sarah’s health battle began in 2017 when she experienced her first and only symptom of head cancer – sparked by her husband, Halan, giving her a kiss.
“He kissed me, and I felt like this really sharp electrical current,” the corporate affairs executive from Sydney, Australia, recalls.
“We were joking, ‘We’ve got chemistry!’ But I did think, ‘That is weird.’”
The tingling sensation refused to go away, and after a week, Sarah visited her doctor.
She was at first told she had neuralgia, severe facial pain caused by compressed nerves.
But when her symptoms failed to improve, Sarah was referred to an ear, nose and throat specialist who discovered a large tumour growing inside her mouth.
“I opened my mouth and, immediately, he could see the tumour. I can’t believe I never noticed it or even felt it,” she said.
Sarah had a biopsy and was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma – a rare and aggressive form of head and neck cancer that tends to develop in the salivary glands.
She was told there was a high likelihood the cancer would spread to other parts of her body following treatment – meaning her her life could be prolonged with treatment but not saved.
A year and a half earlier, Sarah and Halan had welcomed their miracle daughter, Stella, after enduring a gruelling eight rounds of IVF.
Sarah feared her daughter would grow up without a mum but refused to accept her bleak prognosis.
She decided to undergo surgery to remove the tumour, which took 19 hours and was followed with months of radiotherapy.
The treatment caused bone tissue in Sarah’s jaw to start dying and she spent five years in and out of ICU and hospital wards, including months isolated away from her family, before doctors confirmed the cancer was finally in remission.
Healing after ‘chaos’
This was not the end of Sarah’s ordeal as, seven years later, the cancer returned, emerging as a small lesion inside one of her lungs.
The growth was removed via surgery, and Sarah was told she would not need radiotherapy.
But Sarah was blindsided once again — this time by a sudden, chilling sensation that swept across her entire body one week after surgery.
“I couldn’t feel my fingers or my toes. Every surface I touched felt numb,” she recalled.
“I took myself to the emergency room, but the hospital dismissed me as having a panic attack.”
Over five days, Sarah’s condition worsened and she had to demand to be seen by a surgeon.
“My eyes were rolling in the back of my head. My husband was in tears, and within four hours, I was completely paralysed from my neck down,” she said.
“I couldn’t breathe, so I had intubation, then a tracheotomy, and I was in ICU for many weeks.”
Sarah was suffering from Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) – a rare neurological disorder where the body’s immune system turns on the nervous system.
The cause of GBS is not fully understood but is believed to be triggered by a viral or bacterial infection.
Sarah fell unconscious for four days, was put on life support, and her panicked family were told to prepare for the worst.
When she woke up, doctors warned her she would be in hospital for at least a year but remarkably, she was able to leave hospital after two and a half months.
She had to learn to walk and even swallow again over the following six months.
Symptoms of head and neck cancer
Head and neck cancer symptoms depend on:
- Where in the head and neck the cancer started
- If it has spread anywhere nearby, such as the lymph nodes in the neck
If you have certain symptoms, your dentist or GP should refer you to see a specialist within two weeks.
These symptoms include:
- An ulcer anywhere in the mouth area, including the tongue, lasting for more than three weeks
- A red patch (erythroplakia) or red and white patch (erythroleukoplakia) anywhere inside the mouth
- A white patch on its own (leukoplakia) anywhere inside the mouth
- A lump in the neck that does not go away after 2 to 3 weeks
- A lump on the lip or anywhere inside the mouth that does not go away
- A sore tongue that is not getting better
- Throat pain, persistent hoarseness and difficulty swallowing that is not improving
Source: Macmillan Cancer Support
Sarah found strength and comfort in Vedic meditation, a mantra-based tradition which is thousands of years old.
“Meditation enabled me to deal with the constant ups and downs that I had for all those years of my life after my initial surgery,” Sarah said.
“I had so many issues between the first cancer and the second metastasis including face pain, radio necrosis, infections and major fatigue.
“I found that my meditation was really the key enabler for me to be able to deal with all that chaos around me and contribute to my own ability to self-heal.”
Alongside her role as a general manager of corporate affairs, Sarah has also launched her own business, Medi Steady Go®, where she teaches others about Vedic meditation.
She also wrote a book about her health journey and the fundamentals of the practice in her new book, called YOURU: Find the Guru within You.
The cover features Sarah beaming directly at the reader.
“As an author, I thought, ‘How can I stand out on a bookshelf?’” she said. “So I thought, well… I’ll just smile.”