Woman mistook rare cancer for an allergic reaction when her face swelled in size

SWNS

A woman who thought she was having an allergic reaction when her face swelled up was diagnosed with a one-in-a-million cancer.  Melinda Nelson, 35, had just completed a triathlon when she started to notice her face was looking rounder and she was losing muscle from her legs.  Her hands, feet and stomach swelled too and Melinda thought she could have been having an allergic reaction but her tests came back normal.  Melinda went for a scan which revealed she had a 24cm tumour - the size of an American football - on her adrenal gland.  It was secreting too much cortisol and causing Cushing's syndrome and Melinda's symptoms.

Transcript

00:00you

00:30you

00:55hi my name is Melinda and my body's experiencing stage four adrenal

00:59cortical carcinoma which is a rare cancer that affects one in a million

01:02people I started experiencing symptoms in early 2021 in April of 2021 I had

01:09participated in my first triathlon I mentioned that because I was definitely

01:13like in the best shape of my life like right before I started having symptoms

01:16which I think made them very obvious to me I was in California when I started

01:23really noticing symptoms I was traveling out there and house-sitting for a friend

01:27and I thought it was allergies at the time my face was felt really swollen my

01:34legs were swelling my hands were swelling my feet were swelling and so I

01:39knew that there were a lot of allergies going on in the area so I made an

01:44appointment with an allergist that I could find so I went in in person and

01:48she was actually the first one to tell me that I had really high blood pressure

01:54before that I had no idea so I was like well that's weird okay and then she

01:59prescribed me for my face like a hydrocortisone cream so when I talked to

02:03my primary physician or it was a doctor at the same practice she said it sounds

02:08like allergies and here's what I would recommend so I started taking a couple

02:13of things for that so I had been plant-based and gluten-free for a long

02:19time so pretty much just eating a plant-based whole foods diet whole foods

02:23plant-based diet and he was like that's weird that your blood pressure is so high

02:28and he prescribed me some blood pressure medication so I started taking that

02:33which it wasn't really doing anything for me I started reaching out to doctors

02:37in Florida and making in-person appointments because I wanted them to

02:40see me now at this time I was like full-blown Cushing's really big face

02:43really big tummy so I went into the allergist and immunologist and they

02:48ended up I think they started me with like a PA and then they read like my

02:52notes and they were like no no no the day I went in also I think my stomach

02:56was really distended and she said I'm not comfortable with this I feel like

03:00something's going on with your liver I really want to send you for a scan so I

03:03went in for the scan and like two days later I think the allergist called me

03:06back into her office and said I had a huge mass on my adrenal gland that was

03:12the size of a grapefruit they thought at the time it turned out to be the size of

03:14a football once they cut me open the Mayo Clinic was they were the ones to

03:19like officially say we believe this is you know the big C but we also believe

03:24it's ACC specifically

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