Optimism After Butler Surgery

After all the cancer that was evident was removed in a three-hour operation Tuesday on Brett Butler’s neck and throat, surgeon William Grist said that he is optimistic about the Dodger center fielder’s chances for a full recovery.

“Everything went as well as it possibly could have,” Grist, Emory University Hospital’s chief of head and neck surgery, told Butler’s wife, Eveline, upon emerging from the operating room. “Nothing happened that we didn’t plan.”

After answering questions from Eveline, Grist conferred briefly with Dodger team doctor Michael Mellman, who flew here Monday night to represent the team.

Mellman said he hoped to return to Los Angeles in time to give the players details of the successful surgery before Tuesday night’s game against the New York Mets.

During a routine tonsillectomy May 3 in a Duluth, Ga., hospital, doctors also removed a plum-sized tumor on the right tonsil that proved malignant.

The surgery Tuesday was to remove about 50 lymph nodes from the right side of Butler’s neck and scar tissue at the back of the throat near where the tumor had been discovered. Incisions were made from below his right ear to the top of his right shoulder and across his throat.

In a news conference, Grist said that, as anticipated, one of the lymph nodes that had grown to “about the size of a man’s thumb” was cancerous, but he said that preliminary tests showed no cancer in either the other lymph nodes or the tissue removed from the back of the throat.

“As far as we know, there is no other cancer there,” he said.

Grist said he will be able to make a more educated prognosis after a pathology report is delivered early next week. But he said he believes Butler’s chances of survival for five years are 70%. If the cancer does not reoccur within five years, Grist said Butler will be considered cured.

As a caution against the cancer’s return, Grist said Butler, 38, will receive aggressive treatment. That includes five days a week of radiation for six weeks on both sides of Butler’s neck, starting June 4.

The squamous cell cancer detected is extremely sensitive to radiation, Grist said. Unfortunately for Butler, Grist said, so are saliva glands, which provide the mouth with much of its recuperative powers. That means that, for the rest of his life, Butler might have an extremely dry mouth, damage to the portion of the jaw supporting the bottom teeth and tooth decay.

As for Butler’s goal to return to the Dodgers before the end of the season, Grist was not encouraging. But he said Butler could eventually return to baseball.

“From a medical standpoint, he could go back,” Grist said. “I think this season would be hard, but I can’t speak for Brett. He’s a determined guy.”

The cause of the cancer might never be known, but Grist said almost three-quarters of cases like Butler’s stem from the Epstein-Barr virus, which attacked Butler’s immune system in 1989.

Eveline and Butler’s sister and brother from outside Chicago, Beverly and Ben, spent Monday night in a hospital suite provided for the player and his family. The Butlers’ four children, ages 8-13, remained at the family’s home in Duluth, about 35 miles north of Atlanta, with a former nanny and went to school Tuesday.

“I don’t want them to see Brett in the hospital,” Eveline said. “I want them to see him when he’s back home.”

Eveline stayed with her husband of almost 15 years for as long as she could as he was wheeled toward the operating room for Tuesday’s 8 a.m. EDT surgery.

“Probably the hardest part was when we got to a certain point I couldn’t go beyond because there were other patients there, and he wanted me to go with him,” Eveline said, her eyes welling with tears.

“He said he wanted me to be with him when he woke up. He said, ‘You tell me what happened, nobody else.’ ”