Ashlyn Kula

In January, my daughter Ashlyn was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Back in March of last year, she had some swollen glands and went to her doctor. He suspected mono or strep and gave her some antibiotics and told her if it's strep the meds would help but if it's mono, it will just run its course. The swelling went down. A while later the left side swelled again. Thinking it was mono showing itself again, she didn't think much of it. Many people don't know the the Epstein Barr Virus which is the virus that causes mono, can also cause NPC. In January she was diagnosed after an open biopsy was done at UNMC on her neck. After continually waiting on appointments and just feeling like we were wasting alot of time that could have been spent getting treatment, we decided to bring her to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. On February 12th we had Ashlyns 1st appt at Mayo Clinic. That appt led to a PET scan the same day and appts with medical and radiology oncologists the next day. By Monday Feb 15, we had moved into a furnished home and Ashlyns first chemo was Friday February 19th.