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By Chelsea Geach 
1 hour ago
A UCT sophomore is fighting for his future after he was diagnosed with a rare cancer during the confinement.
19-year-old Michael Cilliers left his student’s excavations in Cape Town to visit his parents in Johannesburg when the closure occurred. But being stuck with family became a blessing in disguise when the diagnosis of NUT midline carcinoma shock changed his life.
“Two weeks after the confinement occurred, I noticed a mass on my neck starting to form. It was really uncomfortable and painful, ”Cilliers said.
A GP prescribed antibiotics for a salivary gland infection, and when they didn’t work, she went to the dentist, who thought the pain was probably due to her wisdom teeth. Then a consultation with an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist suggested that you might have stones in your salivary glands. A CT scan revealed no stones, but Cilliers’ neck continued to swell.
“That was the point where I started to panic,” he said.
He underwent surgery to remove the problem salivary gland, and during the surgery, the ENT doctor noticed that the lymph nodes in Cilliers’ neck were not showing well. On a hunch, he sent a tissue sample to the Tygerberg Hospital laboratory for analysis and eventually had a definitive diagnosis of NUT carcinoma.
Two months have passed since the diagnosis. She has lost 12 kg and the cancer has spread to the bones in her hips, shoulders and vertebrae, but chemotherapy appears to shrink the main tumor in her neck.
“It is quite stressful because I have searched online for this cancer and the prognosis is not the best. Of all the different cases that I have analyzed, the prognosis is about six months. I already made two. So I’m nervous, hoping the chemotherapy will help, ”he said.
His oncologist, Dr. Daleen Geldenhuys, said there was very little research on this type of tumor because there were so few in the world, but if chemotherapy shrinks Cilliers’ neck tumor enough, hopefully he will be able to enroll in a clinical trial. international.
“This cancer is extremely rare,” Geldenhuys said.
NUT carcinoma occurs when part of a specific chromosome breaks off and joins another chromosome. Cells begin to grow and divide rapidly and do not die like normal cells do.
“My friends and family have been very supportive, even people I don’t know are praying for me, for which I am very grateful,” Cilliers said.
For more information or to make a donation for Cilliers’ treatment, check out the Fighting For Mike group on Facebook or the fundraising campaign on Quicket.
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