- I'm one of these guys that's never been sick
a day in their life,
until one day, just sitting in my house watching TV,
my girlfriend is sitting next to me,
and I just put my hand up on my neck.
I go, "There's a lump on my neck."
My girlfriend says, "Oh, that's nothing."
I said, "No, it's not nothing."
I had to go to an ENT to get a needle aspiration in my neck,
And, I'm on the bus commuting home from the city,
I get a phone call from the doctor.
"I don't know how to tell you this," he says,
"but you have squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck."
And I'm looking at the internet and I'm going,
well, if you have that, you know,
they're probably gonna just like,
remove your voice box.
I'm going, "oh, this is great;
you know, I'll live like, a few more years
and I won't be able to talk".
You know, things like that.
I was scared to death.
I've always considered myself a New Yorker.
The first thing I thought of was,
well, let me go to the top hospitals in New York.
But honestly, I did not have great experiences there
in the past with other family members.
It seemed like being in New York
even at the most highly rated institutions,
you were more of a number, and that was not for me.
I needed somebody to take care of me.
When I went to Dr. Weinstein's office,
he immediately calmed me down, because,
you know, I started telling him, "Gee, am I going to live?"
He's going, "You're going to be perfectly fine
when you get out of here.
Don't worry about a thing."
He actually has quite a sense of humor
because I said to him,
"Gee, I feel like a really lucky guy."
He goes, "Well, you're not that lucky. You have cancer."
[chuckles]
But he said, "Don't worry about it.
I'm going to take care of you."
And the fact is, he really did take care of me.
- Mark has a really larger-than life personality
and he has kind of, an expectation
to live an extremely full life, and I knew
that we could achieve that with TORS, with him.
And I had no hesitation strongly recommending it for him.
With transoral robotic surgery, you get a 90% cure rate
and almost nobody ends up with a long-term stomach tube.
And once the side effects of the treatment
kind of, dissipate and go away,
you really end up with overall a great quality of life.
- I came out of the surgery and my girlfriend told me
that the man literally came out
and was almost jumping up and down with joy
and saying, "We found the primary tumor.
We have removed it.
We didn't touch a single nerve.
He's going to have no side effects whatsoever."
- Mark was an ideal candidate for proton therapy.
One, because we know
that conventional radiation therapy
to the head/neck region that Mark needed
can cause significant side effects.
We also knew that we're one of the only sites in the world
that can deliver, and has the technology
to be able to deliver a pencil-beam
scanning proton therapy
that is required for head/neck radiation.
- I was in this hospital a lot,
and I was coming here for one specific reason,
to be treated for cancer.
Every single time I came here,
not only did I feel good coming here,
I felt great leaving here.
The way they treat you here, like I said,
it's like you're the president of the United States.
- Mark's long-term prognosis is excellent.
We expect him to live cancer-free
for the rest of his life,
and we also expect his treatments not to interfere
with his life now or in the future.
Mark: This summer I was hiking 10-mile hikes
with like, 1500 feet or 2000 feet of elevation;
on 90-degree days,
schlepping a pack with two giant water bottles
and riding my bike,
going to the ocean,
going dancing with my girlfriend.
My life was completely back to normal.
And when my girlfriend looks at me she says,
"I think you even look better than before the surgery."
[chuckles]
I say, "Okay, I'll take that as a compliment."
But honestly, my life is totally normal.
I feel perfect, and it's because of Dr. Weinstein
and the Penn Medicine team.