I probably wouldn’t be here today if I’d accepted the standard treatment for my stage IV anaplastic thyroid cancer and stayed in San Diego for my cancer care.
But I took my doctor’s advice and went to MD Anderson instead. My oncologist, Dr. Ramona Dadu, my surgeon, Dr. Mark Zafereo, and the Endocrine Center saved my life. They stepped out of the box to do something different for my thyroid cancer treatment — and it worked. I’ve...

As I learned when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this year, there’s a lot of scary and unfamiliar territory to deal with when...
Some of cancer’s secrets are hiding in patients’ blood. Uncovering them involves only a simple blood draw.
MD Anderson is taking innovative...
It’s taken nine years, but Paulette Spivey finally can say with confidence that she’s living without any evidence of cancer.
“I know that I wouldn’t have gotten well had I not gone to MD Anderson,” she says. “No one else could locate the source of my problem.”
Initial thyroid cancer surgery and lymph node removal
Paulette’s “problem” was the high level of thyroglobulin she continued to experience. She’d had her thyroid...

Hearing you have a thyroid nodule can be scary, but it doesn’t always mean you have cancer. In fact, only about 10% of thyroid nodules are...
Until recently, decades passed with little progress in improving the survival rates of parathyroid cancer patients. But our specialized, multidisciplinary...
Veronika Fitzgerald is still amazed by the events that led up to her papillary thyroid cancer diagnosis.
In the fall of 2015, she began...
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer, it may be hard to find others who’ve received the same diagnosis....
Growing up in Lebanon, good health came easily to Vartkes Taktajian. Running, soccer and basketball filled many of the natural athlete’s hours...
Debbie Ann Heckeroth wants everyone to know it’s possible to live a good life while having stage IV cancer.
Debbie lived in California...