Former dental hygienist and oral cancer survivor Jennifer Cicci is on a mission to save lives
Thirteen years ago, Jennifer Cicci’s training and her conviction helped save her life. Today, her courage and tireless advocacy
is helping save others.
Jennifer always knew that she wanted to go into a medical- or dental-related field. But those ambitions were put on hold while she raised her four sons. When she did go back to school for training as a dental hygienist, she was taught how to do intra- and extra-oral screenings on all her patients, and instructed to do so on every patient on every visit. Jennifer then went on to pursue her career, specializing in orthodontics.
It was when returning home from a Labour Day weekend trip in 2013 that she felt an enlarged mass about the size of a quail egg on her neck.
“When I looked in the mirror, I could see the outline of it,” Jennifer recalls. “And my heart dropped into my stomach. I knew the minute
I felt it that it was cancer.”
“About two weeks before I found that lump, I had been visiting at a friend’s house and they had this old dog [with] a tumor in her shoulder … and I spent about 10 or 15 minutes just petting her and playing with this tumor and getting the feel of it. That’s literally how I recognized the texture when I touched that lump on my neck. So that dog saved my life.”
I knew the minute I felt it that it was cancer.
Sure in her conviction that she had cancer, Jennifer went to her family doctor, and then to an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctor where she got scoped and had a fine needle biopsy. The results were inconclusive, but she continued to advocate for more testing and had her boss at the dental clinic she worked at go down her throat with an intraoral camera, and then convinced the ENT doctor to do the same.
The call came on December 23, 2013. Expecting life-changing news, she had taken her sons on a Christmas vacation to Florida.
“I’m in the sunshine, in a bikini, drinking a cerveza [and the ENT says], ‘I got the pathology report back and it’s squamous cell carcinoma.’”
“I just let out a big breath and said, ‘I know.’”
Her ENT doctor put in a referral to a radiation oncologist in Toronto. The surgeon told her that a combination of chemo and radiation was the gold standard in terms of treatment. But Jennifer was also told that for this type of cancer there was a highly controversial surgery that would give the same odds. There was a catch: the surgeon she was seeing did not have a robot to perform it.
“He said, ‘I know someone who does,’” Jennifer recalls. “And an hour and a half later, I was downtown in consult with that surgeon.”
Her new surgeon confirmed that her tumour was caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) and highly susceptible to radiation.
“My train of thought is: if you can cut it right out of the body and get clean margins, that’s going to be my best chance at surviving this,” says Jennifer. The surgeon’s response was immediate: “My motto is heal with steel, and I’m right there with you.”
The treatment was six weeks of daily sessions at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto — an hour and a half drive each way — which Jennifer made alone.
Together we have the power to save lives.
The first three weeks were manageable. Then the pain set in.
“The whole interior of my mouth, my cheeks, the roof of my mouth, the soft palate at the back of my throat and my tongue began to fill up with third degree burns,” she recalls. “I’ll never forget — every day before radiation treatment, I would sit on the floor of my shower and just cry and pray for about half an hour before I would leave to drive to the hospital.”
She drove herself every day for six weeks. She did not miss a session. Through it all, Jennifer says she has absolutely no regrets. Now almost 12 years cancer-free, she wouldn’t change a thing.
“I am here. I am still eating, still thriving, and I appreciate every day,” she says.
What has changed is how she spends her time.
The experience transformed Jennifer from a practitioner who screened her patients carefully into something larger: a full-time advocate who speaks to dental and medical professionals across the country about the importance of early detection.
“I’ve now lost five friends to the same cancer that I had,” she says. “They were all sons, fathers, and brothers, and I can’t go back and help them… I wasn’t shy to advocate for myself, and so I’ve been given opportunities to do patient advocacy to help other people along the way to be able to speak their truth also with their doctors and build their rapport.
“I’m passionate about sharing my story because we’re still in the middle of a global epidemic. The numbers are not expected to level off with HPV-related head and neck cancers till at least 2060.”
The urgency behind that number shapes everything Jennifer does. She talks about the need for oral health professionals to be thorough, consistent, and vocal with their patients both in performing screenings and explaining what they are doing and why.
“We have to be diligent with our screenings of our patients,” she says. “That means looking and diagnosing properly, and educating patients as to what to look for and what’s normal. We need to be able to diagnose these cancers early so that patients don’t have to have as many treatment modalities, or as high a dose of radiation. Maybe they can forego chemotherapy if needed and be treated with one modality instead of three. That’s how we lower the morbidity — so that when they survive, they can move from surviving to thriving.”
For Jennifer, the message is simple even if the stakes are enormous. HPV is the most-common sexually transmitted infection that exists and 100% of Canadians will be exposed to at least one strain of HPV in their lifetime, and 50,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with HPV-related head and neck cancers similar to Jennifer’s this year alone. And yet awareness of the link between HPV and oral cancer remains low. This is a gap she sees as one of the most important ones to close.
“The only thing that I can do that helps me to feel like what I’ve endured is worth the price I paid is to try to make a difference. To help all of those to come to make their path a little better,” she says. “I want to break down the barriers around talking about HPV. I devote my time to working on the things I can impact. Inspiring dentists and hygienists on the front lines to remember that this isn’t just a business model and a moneymaking industry. This is health care. Together we have the power to save lives.”
ARTICLE by Adrian Watzke
PHOTOS and VIDEO by Kevin Kossowan
A Mouth Says A Lot
Oral cancer is largely preventable, and when caught early, outcomes improve significantly. It is also a powerful illustration of something the dental community has long understood: what happens in the mouth does not stay in the mouth. For patients who may think of their dental visit primarily as a teeth-cleaning appointment, an oral cancer screening — already part of your routine exam — reframes that relationship.