A cancer diagnosis was the furthest thing from my mind when I had a myelogram for persistent left leg pain in February 2010. But when the interventional radiologist and the neurosurgeon came into the room, I knew that something was wrong from the look on their faces.

They said I had a large mass behind my lower abdominal organs and needed a biopsy. The results showed I had retroperitoneal sarcoma, a rare type of sarcoma.