Stephanie's Story

Growing up, Stephanie was one of those children who never got sick. She almost never missed a day of school. So at 30 years of age, even though she was feeling fine and was working out at the gym on a regular basis, she was worried when she began feeling lumps on her neck. She went to her doctor who told her she was also concerned; her doctor suggested some X-rays.

The X-rays showed that the lumps on her throat weren’t the only lumps on her body. Lumps were also discovered under her arm, possibly suggesting lymphoma. A biopsy was needed to be sure.

In between the time of the biopsy and the time when the results were scheduled to come back, things took a turn for the worse. As Stephanie put it, “It was strange, but it all just happened to come together in-sync at the very same time.” Within a week of the biopsy, she lost 10 pounds in just three days, found herself sweating all the time and had developed a high fever.

She returned to her family doctor for help, and it was there she was told that she needed to check herself into the hospital because the tests had come back and it was indeed cancer.

Since the biopsy had detected the cancer in her lymph nodes, the assumption was that it was lymphoma. Her doctor referred her to Dr. Al-Katib, a world-renowned lymphoma specialist. He visited Stephanie during her first day in the hospital and, after an full examination, decided that he wanted a bone marrow test to be sure.

His hunch was right. While Stephanie’s cancer had behaved like lymphoma, it was instead acute lymphoblastic leukemia. While she had never met Dr. Al-Katib before that day in the hospital, Stephanie said she never felt a need for a second opinion, because she new “immediately” he was the doctor for her. Only later, after her parents did a little research, did she come to find out that this doctor, who, as she says, “was treating me like his daughter,” was actually the doctor who doctors themselves want to go to when they have cancer. He’s that good.

It’s a style of treatment that Dr. Al-Katib is known for. “When I see a patient, I immediately picture them as if that patient were me, or any of my family, and I ask myself how I would want myself, or my family, treated. When I drive home every evening, I think about how that patient could have been my wife, or could have been my mother, or could have been me.”

Diagnosed on a Wednesday, Stephanie began her treatments that Friday, and she never looked back. As she puts it, “The results were almost instantaneous.” It was chemotherapy first, and then radiation treatments, but it was just a matter of months before Dr. Al-Katib happily told Stephanie she was officially “in remission.”

A few months still remain in her treatment schedule, but all signs point to the fact that Stephanie, along with the help of Dr. Al-Katib, has beaten her leukemia and that her faith in his skills were well placed. “From the moment I met him, when I was diagnosed in the hospital, I really felt like he wanted the best for me and that he wanted me cured so I could go on and live my life.”