54-Year-Old Canadian Woman Will Have to Wear A Prosthetic Nose After COVID Surge Delayed Her Cancer Recurrence Surgery

Because of this delay, Durham will have to wear a prosthetic nose for the rest of her life. Speaking with CTV News, Durham explained that if she had been operated on sooner, she wouldn't have had to lose her entire nose. "I could have used part of my old nose and just had some plastic surgery done," she said. "I could have probably moved on."

At the end of September, as Alberta suffered a severe fourth wave of COVID cases and hospitalizations, all surgeries deemed non-essential were canceled. 15,000 operations were delayed.

A representative for Alberta Health Services told CTV News, "Postponements during wave four extended to all out-of-province surgeries where there was an anticipated need for post-operative ICU care. This helped ensure (Alberta) had adequate ICU capacity, even when demand was extremely high."

Durham had an operation to remove cancer in her nose and under her left eye in April 2020. The surgeon used a screw to reconstruct Durham's nose, and she had two more surgeries to complete the reconstruction. When Durham's nose started appearing inflamed, her doctor said she would have to get the screw removed. She tried multiple times to book a biopsy, but she was denied because of COVID-related limitations. When she was finally able to be seen, the doctor could tell immediately that her cancer had returned.

At this point, Durham's cancer has returned three times, and she is concerned that COVID will continue to keep her from getting her cancer under control. Durham hopes that her story will remind people how important it is to get vaccinated. When people choose not to protect themselves against COVID, other more vulnerable people may have to deal with the consequences.

Breast cancer survivor Julia Louis-Dreyfus asks SurvivorNet community to get vaccinated as a way to help other survivors.

Cancer and Covid

As a cancer patient or survivor, how can you protect yourself from this virus that's still mutating and infecting thousands every day?

Some treatments for cancer, such as chemotherapy, blunt the immune system, meaning you could be more likely to contract COVID-19. That's why it's important to get the COVID-19 vaccine, particularly if you've been diagnosed with cancer, or you are immunocompromised.

If you haven't already, get your Covid shot. (And before you ask, yes, all Covid vaccines are safe for cancer patients and survivors.) Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a doctor from the Mayo Clinic, spoke in an earlier interview about the importance of getting vaccinated if you have cancer. He assures people of their safety, saying, "It is very safe and there is no increased risk to you just because you have cancer."

"As long as you are feeling well, just go ahead with the vaccine whenever it's offered to you. Sometimes even on the same day if you are going to the clinic to get a small dose of chemotherapy and they're giving the vaccine, just get it, there's really no major problem," Dr. Rajkumar says.

"The only people for whom we are saying to delay by a month or two are patients who have had a stem cell transplant because we have wiped out [the patients' immune system]. And so you want to wait until some of the recovery happens so when you give the vaccine, they have an immune response."

5 COVID-19 Vaccine Questions Answered by Expert Physician

If you have received your shot, make sure you get your booster shot. According to Dr. Nina Shah, a hematologist at the University of California San Francisco, it's critical that cancer patients going through active treatment get this booster. "It's very important (to get your booster shot), since we know some cancer patients do not mount a sufficient immune response after the first series of shots," Dr. Shah tells SurvivorNet.

If you're hesitant about the vaccine, recent findings presented at the annual European Society for Medical Oncology conference, or ESMO Congress 2021, a professional society for medical oncology, revealed through multiple studies that cancer patients have "an appropriate, protective immune response to vaccination without experiencing any more side-effects than the general population."

The findings discussed at the conference "offer conclusive evidence that while being largely effective, anti-COVID vaccination is just as safe for people with cancer as it is for the general population," according to Dr. Luis Castelo-Branco, a medical oncologist in the ESMO Scientific and Medical Division.

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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