It had been two years since Billa Woollam’s last mammogram, and she knew she was long overdue for one. But it was a strange sensation in her breast that sent her rushing into a clinic for a breast exam in November 2015. The following morning, she was asked to return for a biopsy.
“My doctor’s office called and said I needed to be there within 30 minutes,” Billa recalls. “I knew they weren’t going to do that if there was nothing...
Jerry McLeary can recall the exact moment he just knew that his journey with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma would end happily.
CAR T-cell therapy is a new type of cancer treatment offered at MD Anderson through clinical trials and FDA-approved standard of care cell...
When the headache started, Tabatha Conway recognized it immediately. Although it had been 20 years since she first felt that headache, she knew what it meant: her brain tumor was back.
“It’s a very specific headache,” Tabatha says. “It feels like blood pulsating towards the back of my head.” It’s a fitting description, because the tumor, called hemangioblastoma, grows from blood vessel cells in the brain.
A stubborn brain...
I’ve been struggling to make myself understood ever since I was a senior in high school. In April 1985, I was diagnosed with stage III nasopharyngeal...
My late husband and I had only known each other for a couple of months when he was diagnosed with stage IV synovial sarcoma — a...
As a cancer caregiver, you’ve probably been told it’s important to take care of your own physical and mental health, too. But sometimes that...
Nothing could have shocked me more than being diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in July 2016. The year I turned 54, I thought my biggest...
During one of breast cancer survivor Margaret Looper’s early visits to MD Anderson some 15 years ago, a volunteer who escorted her to her...
When my father-in-law was in his 30s, he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer as a result of familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), a genetic...
Jan de Chambrier had always envisioned herself as a mother to several children. In 1990, she and her husband were on their way to fulfilling...
After being treated for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (a rare type of throat cancer) in 1985 and salivary gland cancer in 2016, speaking has become...
In high school, I didn’t have much of a social life. I had trouble with insomnia, anxiety, paranoia, depression and apathy. As time went on...
Because its symptoms are often vague, ovarian cancer can be hard to diagnose. And a definitive diagnosis requires a biopsy, which is best...
As a cancer survivor, you know that exercise is one of the key factors in lowering your risk of cancer recurrence. But how do you know if...
Two summers ago, my daughter Claire was about to start her freshman year at the University of Alabama. So, I thought being a 54-year-old empty-nester...