27-Year-Old Med Student With Cancer Shares ‘Concerning’ First Symptoms
Ananya Bashyam, a former biology teacher, shares her harrowing journey of being diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic lymphoma at age 22. After initially being misdiagnosed with liver failure, she underwent extensive treatment for the aggressive bone marrow cancer.
Why it matters
The story highlights the importance of medical advocacy and the challenges of diagnosing aggressive cancers in young adults.
Ananya Bashyam had just started her first job out of college when her vision went completely black one morning. It was September of 2021 and she’d been in the job, a high school biology teacher in Houston with Teach for America, for just a few weeks. “New city, new job, lots of life transitions,” Bashyam tells TODAY.com. That morning, she’d woken up and lost her vision as soon as she stood up from bed. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but this time, “my vision stayed black unless I sat back down,” she recalls. “And I was feeling really dizzy, so (that was) pretty concerning.” Her urine had also turned dark brown, and she had started feeling “really ill,” like she was coming down with the flu, says Bashyam who grew up in Flower Mound, Texas.
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