Meet Olivia, a 14-year-old undifferentiated sarcoma survivor!

Olivia hadn’t been feeling well and ended up at the pediatrician’s office twice the week before her diagnosis. On a Sunday morning, she woke up with the right side of her face swollen. She was taken to urgent care who referred the family to the emergency room. Initially, doctors ruled it out as Temporomandibular Joint dysfunction (TMJ). A nurse came into the room after doctors had cleared out and urged Olivia’s parents to ask for a CT scan so that they could check into the matter further. 

“Not even an hour after the CT, the doctor came back and said ‘let me show you what we have found,’” remembers Rebecca, Olivia’s mother. The family saw Olivia’s tumor for the first time, lodged in her right neck surrounding the carotid artery and inoperable. Olivia was admitted immediately, had an MRI performed and met with a pediatric oncology in the span of a few hours. A biopsy to determine cancer type was performed the next day and initially, doctors thought it was rhabdomyosarcoma. Olivia’s parents asked for another opinion and two more doctors agreed that she had undifferentiated sarcoma. 

According to the National Institute of Health, undifferentiated sarcoma is a type of cancer that forms in the soft tissue but may also form in the bone. 

Treatment started immediately and Olivia went through 36 treatments of proton radiation. She also underwent chemotherapy and another surgery to get the rest of the tumor out, after it had shrunk. As of April 2022, Olivia has consistently shown to have no evidence of disease! 

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