Cancer patient receives double lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine
At 34 years old, Minnesota resident Mandy Wilk thought she had just 2½ years left to live.
She had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and it had spread to her liver. Doctors wanted her to start treatment right away, but after hearing the prognosis, she ended up switching oncologists.
“I really wanted to have an oncologist who maybe saw a longer future,” Wilk, now 42, told USA TODAY. “I moved to a different oncology facility and received treatment there.”
Eventually, doctors detected cancer in her lungs, and she found out about the DREAM program, housed in Northwestern Medicine’s Canning Thoracic Institute. Doctors in the program treat cancer patients who have no other options by performing double lung transplants.
Surgeons have done more than 40 lung transplants. They track the patients’ progress in a registry.
“I was really nervous that I would not qualify for the surgery,” Wilk said, adding that typically to qualify for the program, you can’t have cancer in any other part of your body. At this point, she had had cancer in her liver as well.
“I was just mostly nervous that something would show up somewhere else throughout the evaluation, but I wasn’t nervous about the actual surgery,” she said.
Wilk had her surgery in June and is doing well, she told USA TODAY.
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Doctor says DREAM program is the only one of its kind in the United States
Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, did Wilk’s surgery.
He said the DREAM program typically treats three types of patients:
- Patients who have stage 4 lung cancer.
- Patients whose cancer originated in organs outside the lungs but spread to the lungs.
- Patients who have cancer and were undergoing chemotherapy or immunotherapy leading to damage to their lungs.
The goal, he said, is to replace both lungs and rid them of any type of cancer. Where it gets even more complicated is the fact that many types of cancer can develop in the lungs.
“Every drop of blood in our human body has to pass through the lung, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why they’re the most common organs for cancer metastasis,” he said.
Bharat said a double lung replacement is an extensive procedure for any patient because it requires doctors to remove two of the body’s biggest organs.
“For anybody to go through that process is a very big operation,” he said. “Someone who has phase 4 disease, who has gone through chemotherapy and immunotherapy, is somewhat compromised.”
It’s also a delicate process because doctors are working with millions and sometimes billions of cancer cells. They have to make sure they aren’t spreading cancer cells throughout the patient’s system, he said.
Bharat performed Wilk’s lung transplant on June 3, and her recovery time shocked the doctors, Bharat said.
“She only spent one week and was discharged straight away to home,” he said. “She also did not need to go to a rehab center, which almost 90% of the patients need.”
Before being released, Wilk had to meet certain milestones such as being strong enough and walking and supporting herself, he said.
Double lung transplant was first done on COVID patients
Bharat said DREAM program doctors first performed a double lung transplant on COVID-19 patients.
“We had developed that and the lessons that we learned in taking out these heavily infected COVID lungs,” he said. “We had to take all of these heavily infected lungs out without trying to disseminate the organisms in the body.”
Bharat stressed the need for more opinions on treatment. In Wilk’s case, one doctor told her there wasn’t much that could be done, but her persistence led to treatment that changed her life.
“If she hadn’t done her due diligence, I don’t believe that she would be alive today,” he said.
More on Wilk’s treatment
Wilk had various types of treatment when she was first diagnosed with colon cancer in 2017, including chemotherapy, as well as tumors removed from her liver when the cancer spread.
She also had a liver transplant in June 2020 at the University of Chicago. Her donor was her younger brother, Adam, she said.
But soon after, things changed. Doctors at the university were monitoring how she was doing and, six months later, found signs of cancer in her lungs.
Because the cancer was in different places on both of her lungs, she wasn’t eligible for a lung resection, where doctors remove part of the lung to treat illnesses.
Wilk underwent more treatments, but her tumors were growing, she said. Her oncologist in Minnesota had been in contact with doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, who eventually told her about the health system’s DREAM Program.
After she had her surgery in June, she got to ring the stepdown transplant bell in honor of her completing treatment, she said.
“It was just very coincidental that it happened to be on my birthday, but also really exciting,” she said.
Road to recovery: What’s next for Mandy Wilk?
Wilk is getting back into things she did before her diagnosis, like running. She first became interested in running in college. She loved being outdoors and found it was a good stress reliever. She walks now and is trying to strengthen her lung capacity.
She’s also part of an organization her younger brother started in her honor. Wilk used to work as a classroom teacher, and now she is a curriculum and instruction specialist for schools in Minnesota.
The group, Mandy’s Foundation, raises money for art therapy and pediatric education at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
“I just remember thinking at the same time I’m going through all these treatments, kindergartners are going through all these treatments and how sad that is,” Wilk said. “I can’t imagine that for a kid.”
She encourages patients to advocate for themselves and seek multiple opinions.
“It’s maybe a no for one place, but the doctors and the nurses and everyone at Northwestern have given me the best care I’ve ever received. Everyone is so thoughtful and really treats me as a person.”
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at@SaleenMartin or email her at[email protected].
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