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Last
summer, Maggie Westlund
reached a breaking point. For more
than a decade, she had lived with
a large growth on the soft palate
of her mouth that had caused
bouts of strep throat and
difficulty breathing. And
while it disappeared at one
point, it came back in 2009
when Westlund became
pregnant with her daughter,
Riley. Now bleeding and
fluctuating in size, the growth
made her pregnancy much more difficult.
Doctors warned that the growth would
have to go before Westlund became
pregnant again. What had once seemed
like “no big deal” had become quite the
opposite for this busy young mom,
who was working full-time while
earning her bachelor’s degree.
Westlund read reviews rating
Rajiv Pandit, MD, an independently
practicing otolaryngologist on the
medical staff at Methodist Dallas
Medical Center, among the best in
Dallas. So last July she made an
appointment with him.
“I liked him immediately,” Westlund,
26, says. “He was probably the most
thorough doctor I’ve ever seen.”
That thoroughness paid off,
because during the surgery Dr. Pandit
discovered that the growth was actually a
mucoepidermoid carcinoma — cancer.
A change of plans
Westlund’s condition now required two
surgeries: one on Aug. 19 to remove the
tumor and another three weeks later to
reconstruct the soft palate. Dr. Pandit
had originally proposed using transoral
robotic surgery (TORS) with the
da Vinci® Surgical System, but with
cancer in the picture, TORS would
offer even more benefits.
“Transoral means through the mouth,”
Dr. Pandit explains. “The main reason
Now Maggie Westlund has no more sore throats, no more pain,
no more breaking points — just a bright future for her and her family.
High-tech
with a human touch
Thanks to the da Vinci
®
Surgical System, Maggie Westlund is now cancer-free
12
Methodist Health System
•
❁
Spring 2012