COTC helps student track cancer growth

NEWARK - When Mandi Schaub decided to enrolled at Central Ohio Technical College, it was because she needed a change in career.

Her job as a medical transcriptionist, in which she types up dictated reports by doctors, is being phased out. She decided to study diagnostic medical sonography technology. And earlier this year, the knowledge and skills Schaub is learning became applicable in her own life.

Schaub found a lump in her breast. She already had an appointment scheduled with her doctor for something unrelated and mentioned it during the appointment. But while she waited for an official test ordered by her doctor, she asked her professor if her mass could be scanned during a lab.

Schaub, 38, said she never thought what she was learning in class would be applicable to her own life.

"I don’t think anybody goes around thinking: 'I'm going to find a mass' or 'I'm going to diagnose myself.' " she said.

Through the scans done in class, Schaub closely monitored her mass as it continued to grow from when the official test had been done to when she met with an oncologist a few weeks later.

“He could look at the original scan, where it was only ... 3 by 1 centimeters to the most recent scan that I took in class that would not longer fit on the screen," she said. "That’s measuring close to 5 centimeters by 3 now."

Schaub was diagnosed with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma called primary breast lymphoma.

"It’s less than 1 percent of all non-Hodgkin," Schaub said. "Now there’s a lot of people with non-Hodgkin, but to only have it in your breast and nowhere else, it doesn’t happen very often."

Because of her self-exam and the scans done in class, the lymphoma was caught early. It has not spread anywhere else.

"I have no lymph node involvement, which is very good," she said. "I was able to be my own advocate because the whole time I was trying to get into the surgeon, I was calling: 'I just got done with scan lab and it’s growing.' "

Melinda Shoen, Schaub's professor, said because students in the program practice scans on each other, it's not uncommon for them discover something in a student.

"Every year we find a few things, just nothing to this extent," Shoen said.

In the past, students have discovered their classmates have gallstones, thyroid tumors, liver masses and even a heart defect and melanoma, which they discovered when they were changing into their patient outfit.

Shoen said students never diagnose each other and just refer their findings to a student's doctor.

In Schaub's case, the scans were another way to track the cancer's growth in between trips to her doctor.

"Even though she was under the care of her physician, they had no idea that it was growing so rapidly," Shoen said. "By us doing serial ultrasounds, multiple ultrasounds in a row, we were able to show how fast it was growing, and that was the new information that nobody knew, and that really sped up the process by weeks."

Not only were the scans helpful to Schaub and her doctors, but they also presented a learning opportunity for the other students in the program.

"The more our students learn, the more they realize really how complicated sonography is," Shoen said. "This was confirming that what we do is very valuable."

Schaub's classmates have rallied behind her. They have started a GoFundMe to help not only with her medical expenses, but to allow her to stop working on both Saturdays and Sundays. She's been working on the weekend in addition to going to school full time, taking care of her children and undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

Shoen said Schaub has been amazing throughout the process.

"She hasn’t missed one class. She just comes in with a positive attitude," Shoen said. "If she hadn’t lost her hair, I don’t think people would have known she was even battling something so hard because she’s very positive."

Schaub said she is thankful she came back to school.

"If I had just stayed on the path I was going on and just working at a computer all day long, I would have been just shuffled along with all the other patients," she said, "It takes a long time to get into a surgeon and then getting scheduled for pathology."

Schaub, who goes for her third chemotherapy treatment Thursday, said she still plans to graduate in May.

"It’s been a long road," she said. "I have a deadline. I’m going to get there."

mdevito@gannett.com

740-328-8513

Twitter: @MariaDeVito13