Dr. Barbier led an incredibly accomplished life in Primary Care Medicine. As a doctor of osteopathic medicine, for over 30 years, she practiced medicine in Northern New Jersey, serving the communities of Newark, Belleville, and Bloomfield in Essex County. In addition to serving patients in four hospitals, two nursing homes, and a long-term care facility, she became a trailblazer. She broke the glass ceiling when she made history by becoming the first woman to serve as President of the Medical Staff at Clara Maass Hospital in Belleville, New Jersey. Clara Maass, the woman the hospital is named after, was a trailblazer herself in the field of Nursing. Dr. Barbier served in this role at the very beginning of the pandemic, which is when she found out she had Stage 4 Squamous Cell Carcinoma in a very peculiar way.
After a short vacation in Newport, Rhode Island, Dr. Barbier spent the Labor Day holiday in Ortley Beach, New Jersey, at a colleague’s house on the Jersey Shore. It was then that something strange started happening in her mouth. One day, she was completely fine; the next day, her tongue was swollen, and she was slurring her speech. Everything carbonated burned her mouth like it was being set on fire. The day before, she was fine. Upon initial examination, it appeared she was fighting some oral infection.
The following day, the Tuesday after Labor Day, she was back in her office at her medical practice. Her dentist, a close personal friend, was bringing in his elderly mother for a checkup with Andrea. He heard Dr. Barbier’s slurred speech and asked her what was happening in her mouth. He examined her briefly in her waiting room and told Dr. Barbier, you have oral cancer. It looks like squamous cell carcinoma. He told her, you need to get that biopsied… like yesterday.
Dr. Barbier was shocked as he merely glanced at her mouth and tongue in his initial diagnosis. How could this even be possible? She was a non-smoker and light drinker. She went for that biopsy right away, and her dentist was in fact correct, a stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma diagnosis was confirmed. Although they could be seen with the naked eye, the tongue had tiny, almost microscopic islands of cancer, white in appearance against her tongue’s pink/red color. Because this diagnosis was at the beginning of the pandemic, she was unable to get any surgery or treatment because of the New Jersey Governor’s Executive Order pausing all cancer treatments and surgeries during that time. That, unfortunately, delayed her initial surgery by 6 weeks, and it allowed the cancer to spread from her tongue to the right side of her jaw in between her gumline and teeth. Then onto the lymph nodes on both sides of her neck. After cancer treatments were resumed along with surgeries at New Jersey hospitals, she had her initial surgery to remove half of her tongue in the winter of 2020. This would be the first of four surgeries, which included removing tumors from the right side of her gumline and teeth and lymph nodes on both sides of her neck. These surgeries made it difficult for her to move her neck and eat, drink, and speak, but she continued to work full-time and serve her patients as well as serve her role as President of the Medical Staff for two years during the pandemic. All this while being treated with multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, and 53 rounds of targeted radiation to her mouth at her local hospital of Clara Maass, which would take us into 2022.
Eventually, after the traditional chemotherapy and radiation failed and the cancer kept coming back, she brought her case to Sloan Kettering in Basking Ridge, which specialized in oral cancer of the head and neck. They do all the cancer research and treatments in Northern New Jersey for hard-to-treat patients who have failed the standard of care with traditional therapies. She installed a feeding tube to help with added nutrition during this time. She started a combination of chemotherapies in conjunction with the immunotherapy Keytruda and, later on in her 5-year treatment journey, the immunotherapy Cetuximab.
In late 2023, we discovered that squamous cell carcinoma had mutated into spindle-cell cancer. This baffled the team at Sloan Kettering because this mutation usually does not manifest until 15-20 years after the initial diagnosis. We will treat this mutation with immunotherapies and chemotherapy going forward into 2025.
It was during the summer of 2024, with treatments with the immunotherapies Keytruda and eventually Cetuximab, that we did see a 30% reduction in the size of the tumor activity in her mouth. By September of 2024, however, as the tumors were getting necrotic and dying off, Andrea developed severe spontaneous bleeding episodes, which unfortunately involved intubating her and installing a trace collar on October 3rd of 2024. This removed her ability to speak, eat, or drink anything by mouth. In conjunction with the Sloan Kettering immunotherapy Cetuximab, we also started alternative treatments at home with Fenbendazole and Apricot Kernel Extract in November of 2024. The tumors continued to shrink, she had more room in her mouth, and the swelling in her tongue was non-existent. Unfortunately, the spontaneous bleeding caused many setbacks.
She would have a total of five embolization surgeries to address internal bleeding in her mouth from branches of arteries and, eventually, her carotid artery on the right side of her neck, which supplied blood flow to the tumors. That last surgery was on January 23rd, 2025. The tumors were continuing to shrink in size and die off. She communicated with a digital whiteboard, worked the back end of her medical practice, and had a covering physician see her patients until her passing on February 11th, 2025. She would pass at home with her dogs Phoebe, Buttons, and Munson after waging an epic battle with oral cancer.
Dr. Barbier was known for her strong leadership, commitment to patient care, support for her dedicated nurses and doctors, and unwavering dedication to advancing the medical profession while always advocating for her patients. Her influence extended beyond her professional achievements, and she inspired countless women and men to pursue careers in medicine.