Twenty-year-old patient battles and beats a rare cancer
Evan Rees underwent surgery at HSC in June 2024.
Evan Rees is back to getting in shape, lifting weights, and playing beer league hockey. Not bad for a guy who had a big piece of his lung removed in June 2024.
“I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact I had cancer in the first place,” says Rees, an athletic therapy student at the University of Manitoba.
Rees’s health challenges started in early 2023 with a diagnosis of pneumonia. Throughout the year, he had a few more bouts of pneumonia that were always treated with antibiotics. Along the way, he also experienced severe back pain that wouldn’t go away. After a few emergency room visits to a city hospital, doctors ordered a CT scan in January that showed a tumour in his left lung. He was transferred to Health Sciences Centre for further investigation and care.
Rees underwent a biopsy and an endobronchial ultrasound bronchoscopy (EBUS) in the donor-funded Wilf Taillieu Thoracic Surgery Clinic and Endoscopy Unit.
“It was fast and organized at the clinic, with no waiting once I got there. There was no time to panic or be nervous,” says Rees. “The EBUS isn’t fun, but I felt very confident the whole time.”
By February, the diagnosis was known. Dr. Larry Tan informed Rees that he had a very rare cancer, similar in type to a clear cell salivary gland carcinoma. The tumour was on his bronchus, an airway that leads from the trachea to a lung. No air was passing through, which explains the frequent pneumonias and back pain. The good news was that the cancer was contained and hadn’t spread.
Evan Rees was diagnosed with cancer in early 2024.
Rees started three rounds of chemotherapy in April and was scheduled for surgery in June with Dr. Tan who removed the lower lobe of Rees’s left lung and re-attached the upper part of the lung to the airway.
“The staff at HSC was amazing, especially the nurses in the surgical step-down unit,” says a grateful Rees, reflecting on his 12-day hospital stay. “They walked with me up and down the hallway. I needed the help because I was weak and connected to a chest tube and an IV. Everyone at HSC cared about my treatment and I had a really good sense all along that everyone was working as a team.”
In a follow-up appointment with Dr. Tan in August, Rees heard the words that he was longing to hear from the moment the tumour was first discovered seven months earlier: “You are cancer-free.”
Today, Evan Rees is cancer-free and back to enjoying his hobbies.
There are still some follow-up appointments on Rees’s calendar, but he’s feeling good, feeling strong, and feeling grateful. And he has a few words to share with other young adults:
“If you get a rough diagnosis, don’t get into your head too much. Listen to your docs. And if you have to go to HSC, they will take amazing care of you.”
To support thoracic patients at HSC like Evan Rees, please donate to the Advancing Thoracic Surgical Care Fund at hscfoundation.mb.ca/donate, or call the HSC Foundation office at 204-515-5612 or 1-800-679-8493 (toll-free).
