For years, Emily dealt with persistent pain in her ear that she assumed was a chronic ear infection. However, after multiple visits to urgent care, her primary care physician, and an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist, she was still in pain.

In 2021, she was able to get imaging that confirmed there was some sort of growth near one of her parotid glands. The parotid glands are located on either side of the mouth, right in front of the ears, and are responsible for making saliva.

Emily’s doctors suspected that it was a benign (non-cancerous) growth, and recommended she get the gland surgically removed. After the surgery, the growth was sent to a pathologist at the hospital. The pathologist examined it under a microscope and discovered that it was not benign – it was cancer.

Though the tumor was cancerous, the pathologist wanted confirmation of the exact diagnosis, so they sent her sample to be examined by a group of pathologists at another hospital. These pathologists disagreed with the first diagnosis, so they sent Emily’s sample to a third group of pathologists for review. Four weeks after her procedure, these pathologists were finally able to give her a final diagnosis: a very rare type of salivary gland cancer called polymorphous adenocarcinoma of the parotid gland.

“I’m so grateful for pathologists who are such experts int their field that they were able to help me give a diagnosis! They put in so much hard work to learn their skill and stay current with research.”

While her sample was sent from lab to lab, Emily was in a holding pattern, waiting for a final diagnosis to move forward with treatment. “With so much uncertainty around the type of cancer, which determined how aggressive my treatment needed to be, I had a lot of doubts about how I wanted to proceed.”

After she received her final diagnosis, she received radiation treatment to ensure the cancer did not spread. Though the process took longer than she would have liked, she’s very glad she was finally able to finally able to get an answer and encourages other patients to ask questions and seek out answers.

“Getting a second opinion can be helpful for both you and your providers.”