Canadian Woman Cut in Half to Save Her Life

[Swede]

Incredible.

The mother-of-two was diagnosed with the bone cancer chondrosarcoma while she was pregnant with her second child three years ago. Because the cancer was untreatable by chemotherapy, doctors in Toronto proposed a cutting-edge operation which had, before Ollson, only been performed on cadavers.
To get to the tumor, surgeons from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., would need to remove her leg, her lower spine and half her pelvis. Then, they would put her back together again.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20428886,00.html

[SoxFan]

1. All the king's horses and all the king's oncologists...

did put Mrs. Dumpty together again!

:applause:

[undeterred]

2. I wonder if the Canadian health care system covered her costs.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. You mean even though she had the surgery in another country? Wouldn't that be out-of-network?

Oh wait.
O8)

[undeterred]

6. The world is their network.

People in socialized countries could get this drastic surgery if they needed it, but there are probably a lot of Americans who would end up dying if they got this kind of tumor.

[Swede]

5. That's how they do it.

If the treatment cannot be done locally,they will send you to another jurisdiction where it can.

[Posteritatis]

8. Usually, anyway

There are a few cases in my neck of the woods where someone needed something available elsewhere and either couldn't get it or had a very hard time doing so.

Of course, and fortunately, those are mostly outliers; what we've got is generally good and occasionally gets a little better. Small steps for the most part, but steps nonetheless.

[applegrove]

9. Yup. If they can't do the job the government pays for an operation in the USA.

[HopeHoops]

3. And then they put the video up on YouTube.

[nomorenomore08]

7. You mean this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8&ob=av3e

:hide:

[rug]

10. I hope they didn't play cheesy magician music during the operation.

[nolabear]

11. I have to say, this has a very strange effect on me. My mother had very similar surgery in 1965.

I won't go into much detail because it's really dreadful what she went through. They didn't do the bone graft and repositioning the leg but they did do the hemipelvectomy. She was also pregnant and had, not bone cancer but a soft tissue sarcoma. She only survived for four years, and at least in her case, and I wonder if it's the same with this young woman, there was a lot more to it than is easily talked about in a public venue. I hope these people have a great deal of physical and emotional support.

Edited to add tht I was nine at the time, and she twenty eight. So young.