A Texas cancer survivor is sharing her story after being railroaded by doctors for years. They told her that she was too young to have cancer.
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33-year-old Katie Coleman says that doctors finally diagnosed her with a rare kidney cancer called renal mass carcinoma in 2020. This comes after years of feeling off and not right, but she said medical examiners wouldn't take her seriously.
Now, she's sharing her story in her memoir Too Young for Cancer (via Business Insider). She said that several doctors told her that she was too young to have cancer. When a doctor finally diagnosed her, she said that she started to panic.
"My vision tunneled in as my heart rate, quickly escalating, began setting off alarms behind me," she wrote. "For years, I had kept asking doctors if we could rule out cancer in my pursuit of vague symptoms. I'd been terrified of this moment, and the catastrophic worrying had led me to imagine the delivery of this news probably 100 times before. But now that it was actually happening, it was nothing like I'd imagined it would be."
Cancer Survivor Shares Story
However, she said that she was happy that a medical examiner finally believed her and gave her the answers that she was seeking.
"It felt like I finally had an answer to why I'd been feeling off. And it wasn't all in my head," she continued. "I wasn't surprised to hear something was wrong. Because I had known something was wrong; I just hadn't gotten anyone to take me seriously. But now we had undeniable proof, and for the first time, I was sitting across from a doctor who believed me and seemed to care genuinely. I knew this wouldn't be an easy road, but at least I no longer had to travel it alone."
Sadly by the time doctors spotted the disease, she was already at Stage 4. Still, she decided to fight the deadly disease.
"Unfortunately, because of how rare this is, there isn't much info or data available on treatment protocols and no clinical trials to join," she wrote on Instagram at the time. "My oncologist wants me to start treatment that has worked on other kidney cancer types but there isn't any data about it being used in the type I have from what I understand. I'm scared, I'm terrified, and I'm devastated. But I'm going to push on and I'm going to fight."
Fortunately, treatment seemed to work, and right now she is in remission from it.
