A top Australian chef dedicated to his craft was forced to make the traumatic decision to choose his ‘last meal’, before having part of his mouth removed as doctors battled to contain two aggressive forms of cancer.
Brendan O’Keefe, from Adelaide, spent 15 years cooking and sampling food from the best kitchens in the country. Then, in 2021, he became irritated by what he thought was an infected tooth, after detecting a “small lump” on the gum.
He gave it little thought and did not even rush to see a doctor.
When he did, he was referred to a maxillofacial surgeon, who as a precaution decided to perform a biopsy on his gum. But he told Brendan that he was “99.9 percent sure” there was nothing sinister to uncover.
How wrong I was. The minor irritation was actually a sign that she had two forms of rare and aggressive cancer of the head and mouth; Spindle cell carcinoma and rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS).
Brendan O’Keefe, from Adelaide, was diagnosed with two different forms of cancer in one year: sarcomatoid spindle cell carcinoma of the breast and rhabdomyosarcoma, a ‘rare’ type of sarcoma.
The chef had been suffering from what he thought was an infected tooth after detecting a “small lump” on his gum in 2021, so he did not “rush” to see a doctor.
“I had spent 15 years of my life eating at the best restaurants across the country and I didn’t know if my way of tasting and eating would ever be the same again. As it turns out, he was right and the food would be forever changed.
“I had light sedation and everything was going well until I heard the words ‘wow, this is not what I expected’ very clearly.” At that point, my gut was starting to tell me that I was in trouble,” Brendan told FEMAIL.
“He had to stop because he was in pain and he couldn’t find the end of the injury because it was so deep.”
Brendan had to wait 20 days for the biopsy results and was finally told the terrible news over the phone.
‘My phone rang and my heart skipped a beat. I knew this was it. The surgeon didn’t mince words, he just started throwing around a lot of big medical terms,” he said.
“I lay in bed thinking about how I was going to tell this to my wife, Emily, and the rest of my family.”
When she spoke to him, the only two words she could utter were ‘it’s cancer’ and the couple cried for hours.
He chose Africola, a South African barbecue restaurant in Adelaide. for his last meal, where he and Emily enjoyed wagyu sirloin pipis with pear couscous and beetroot labne and lentil sprout salad
From then on it was all a ‘whirlwind’ for Brendan who had non-stop phone calls with doctors, appointments and scans while still working in hospitality.
Brendan decided to enjoy a ‘last meal’ before the oral surgery in case he lost his sense of taste forever.
He chose Africola, a South African barbecue restaurant in Adelaide with his wife Emily, and enjoyed a wagyu sirloin steak, pipis with pear couscous and beetroot labne and sprouted lentil salad.
“I spent 15 years of my life as a chef, eating at the best restaurants across the country, and I didn’t know if the way I taste and how I would ever be the same.
“As it turns out, he was correct and the food and the way it tasted would be forever changed,” he said.
Surgeons removed almost two-thirds of his upper jaw, including his teeth, as well as lymph nodes from the surrounding tissue.
In January 2022, Brendan underwent his first major surgery and doctors found a 6cm long tumor on his head. A third spread to his mouth.
The rest of the tumor was “hidden” in her maxillary sinus, a hollow space in the bone next to her nose.
Surgeons removed almost two-thirds of his upper jaw, including his teeth, as well as lymph nodes from the surrounding tissue.
He then required a second surgery the following month as his team of doctors “were not happy with the margin achieved” and wanted to make sure the cancer did not persist.
To this day, doctors aren’t sure what caused the life-threatening cancer, and they probably never will.
Since the ordeal, Brendan has been unable to eat solid food and his facial structure has completely changed. He also has difficulty speaking.
‘I just wonder, why me? Have I really been such a bad person? What did I do in a previous life? Or maybe it’s all random and I’m very, very unlucky,” she said.
‘One of the hardest parts was not being able to get a specific forecast. They told me they don’t know, or that my specific cancer is so rare that there really isn’t enough date to say.’
“They (the doctors) keep saying that I am young and that they should do everything they can to make sure that I don’t come back. The urgency and his aggressive approach told me everything.’
After surgery, he began six and a half weeks of intensive radiation therapy. During this time, Brendan worked closely with a dental team to ensure that the radiation did not destroy his bones and his remaining teeth.
Since the ordeal, Brendan has been unable to eat solid food and his facial structure has completely changed. He also has difficulty speaking.
‘Until recently I was wearing a special denture called an obturator, which was specially designed to seal the hole in my mouth. Without this, I was struggling to speak, food and drink going into my mouth and straight out my nose,” she said.
‘Swallowing food felt like razor blades. I was struggling to keep the weight off and ended up on a liquid diet,” she said.
“I can’t really drink through a straw anymore, I can’t blow out a candle, and I have huge numbness all over the left side of my face.
“The way I look has also changed, my facial structure has changed on one side, I have large scars, a large part of my facial hair never grew back after radiation therapy.”
Within three weeks of treatment, Brendan also lost his ability to taste and clumps of hair fell out. His mouth stopped producing saliva and he soon developed a yeast infection.
That meant everything around his mouth was burning, and even drinking water felt like his mouth was ‘on fire’.
‘Swallowing food felt like razor blades. I was struggling to keep the weight off and ended up on a liquid diet,” she said.
“My team is struggling to figure out what will work best for my next round of treatment, at this stage they are not sure if I should be treated for carcinoma or sarcoma, which complicates things significantly.”
‘I want to live’, he said
Last month he underwent extensive surgery to remove and reconstruct a part of his lower jaw using a part of his fibula and “a very large skin graft” from another part of his leg.
“At the same time, my neck was opened on both sides and another 80 to 100 lymph nodes were removed for further examination,” he said.
“Talking to my oncology team, they told me they’re not sure what causes it, and because of the rarity of this type of tumor, it’s unlikely I’ll ever figure out the cause; it usually affects older people, like more than 70.’
All you can do right now is wait and wait.
In the meantime, he’s enrolled in clinical trials in an attempt to help find some answers about what to do next. And she still works as an assistant manager at a restaurant.
Two prayers from Brendan’s ‘incredible’ mother got him through some of his darkest days. She said to him ‘Do you want to live? Or do you want to die’ and ‘take it one day at a time’.
“I couldn’t have gotten this far without those words of wisdom,” he said.
‘I want to live’.
