Imagine slicing into an onion — and then removing a third of the vegetable without damaging the healthy inner layers and core. That, in essence, is the medical marvel that Dr. David Dupree and his team at Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, N.J., pulled off last month when they removed a 51-pound tumor from a dying woman.
“Before the operation, the doctor told me there was a mass there and that it was very big,” Evelyn, the patient who asked to be identified only by her first name, told The Daily News. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s huge.”
Dupree said the tumor “was about a third of her body weight” and took five hours to remove. “One wrong move and she would have died,” he said.
In his first extensive interview since performing the surgical feat, Dupree said the woman — a 65-year-old mother of two from Union Beach, N.J. — has made a remarkable recovery. Evelyn weighed 171 pounds and “looked like she was nine months pregnant with triplets” before the surgery, said Dupree.
Now, she’s down to 120 pounds and “she has not had a single post-op complication,” the surgeon said. “She has a new lease on life.”
Evelyn agreed.
“This whole surgery was really a miracle,” she said from her hospital bed. “I don’t have any pain. I never heard of anybody after surgery not hurting.”
Evelyn was on death’s door when she arrived in the emergency room last month, breathing with the help of a machine and “maxed out on blood pressure medication,” said Dupree.
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