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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