“I was on the verge of losing my voice. But I decided not to be a mute spectator.” – Kausalya, Cancer Survivor

This is the story of 61years old Kausalya, a teacher by profession who won over cancer with the specialist in cancer care. In September 2009, Kausalya experienced severe cold and cough and decided to meet a General Physician for the same and was advised by the doctor to undergo a course of antibiotics for relief. She continued to feel a hoarseness in her voice for another 3 weeks and one day in between her lecture she felt that she could not speak and asked a student to read from the textbook. Kausalya decided to meet her doctor the same evening as she experienced discomfort in her throat. Upon further evaluation, she was recommended to meet a specialist for an endoscopy, where a lump was detected in her throat and she was advised to undergo a biopsy.

After the initial evaluation done at Dharwad where her CT scan reports suggested a supraglottic soft tissue growth involving the AE fold and multiple cervical modes. As Kausalya is a Lecturer by profession and losing voice would be her worst nightmare, she further decided to travel to Bangalore and seek a second opinion from the doctors at HCG – The Specialist in Cancer Care. At HCG, she underwent further evaluation in the month of October 2009 and the PET Scan reports showed a metabolically active infiltrating mass in left vocal cord extending to the supraglottic larynx & left aryepiglottic fold with infiltration of the anterior commissure.

Usually in cases of Supraglottic cancer, hospitals recommend a surgery which ends up with the removal of the entire vocal cord, followed by tracheostomy and loss of voice due to which the percentage of recurrence get higher, but unlike other Hospitals the doctors at HCG planned the entire treatment with a neoadjuvant chemotherapy, followed by concurrent chemoradiation. Apart from which technology like Intensity Modulated Radio Therapy (IMRT) helped Kausalya to get rid of the tumour without removing her vocal cord in February 2010.

After treatment, Kausalya worked as a lecturer until her retirement and it has been almost 7 years since her treatment procedure completed and there are no symptoms of recurrence and she is having the normal and quality life with regular follow-ups since then.