Imagine you’re a mother, sitting at the pediatrician’s office, learning that your young son has an advanced and rare form of kidney cancer. Imagine the shock, the fear, and the uncertainty. It’s an experience Leo’s mom Nicole knows all too well.

Imagine being told you have cancer at the age of 5: The confusion and fear. Inundated by words that sound bigger than you are. Undergoing treatments that make you too sick to play with your friends or do your schoolwork.

Accounting for less than 1% of cancer diagnoses each year, leiomyosarcomas are both aggressive and recur often. Most patients with this rare tumor face a 50% chance of recurrence.

For patients in chemotherapy for blood cancers, the risk of developing fever and infections is higher. It's also more lethal.

What was it about your early training experiences that inspired you to pursue surgical oncology as a career?

Dr. Viet: As I started interacting with these patients with oral cancer, I realized they had very poor survival.