DESCRIPTION When Jess began to feel pain in her right leg in 2020, she thought it was sciatica.  When extreme pain radiated to her lower back, a physical therapist thought she had a bulging disc.  However, her condition worsened, she went in for an MRI, and it revealed a tumor originally thought to be on her spinal cord.  Further tests indicated the tumor was inside her spinal cord and a diagnosis of myxopapillary ependymoma, a rare cancer.  The tumor was surgically removed,

DESCRIPTION   Adam Deans was an athletic teenager and had aspirations of becoming a professional athlete.  However, all that changed when he fell down a flight of stairs at school.  At first, doctors thought Adam had dislocated his left knee, but upon getting further medical attention, tests showed he had cancer, known as osteosarcoma in his distal femur.  Doctors recommended chemotherapy, but when that was ineffective, the leg was amputated in 2005.  In 2008, a friend introd

DESCRIPTION What began as a harmless looking spot on Kevin Donaghy’s forearm turned into a pair of diagnoses of skin cancer.  The first was Stage II in 2018, but 18 months later, it returned and was diagnosed Stage IV metastatic melanoma BRAF+.  The urologist said Kevin, an IT specialist from Melrose, Scotland, may have six months to live unless he underwent a newly-approved immunotherapy known as pembroluzimab.  That was in 2020, and Kevin is still with us.  The immunotherap

DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION On this episode of the @CancerInterviews podcast, prior to his death in 2026, Mark Kageyama told host Bruce Morton about his surviving three cancers.  A diagnosis of prostate cancer became metastatic prostate cancer when it was learned his cancer spread to his lungs and bones.  To fight the cancer, Mark had to experience an aggressive chemotherapy, with the medication, taxotere.   Mark Kageyama of Granada Hills, California was in his mid-sixties in Oct

DESCRIPTION   Note: Erin Cummings passed away in 2026.   Erin Cummings was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 1972.  At age 15, she noticed a lump on her throat and another on her chest.  That led to a diagnosis of Stage 3B Hodgkin lymphoma.  She was shocked at her diagnosis but initially had trouble putting into perspective just what she was up against because she cancer was something suffered by old people.  Even though she achieved survivorship, she still deals with residu

DESCRIPTION Blood detected in Bob Schreiber’s urine led to a diagnosis of Stage IV bladder cancer.  This came after a cystoscopy, in which a tube is inserted into his urethra, taking a picture of the bladder.  Twice without success, Bob hoped BCG treatment would address the cancer by instilling a set of chemicals inside the bladder to strengthen the immune system.  As a result, he had to get his bladder removed.  It was replaced with a neobladder, which was made from his smal