20-year-old shares ‘crazy random cancer symptoms’ doctors dismissed: ‘I would have died if I didn’t push’
A 20-year-old Iowa woman is sounding the alarm on social media after doctors brushed off her “crazy random cancer symptoms” — a move that nearly killed her.
“If you guys have ever had anything like this, please run to the ER and advocate for yourself because I would have died if I didn’t, like, push these doctors to check me out,” Kenzie Dryden said in a recent TikTok.
Dryden was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in April 2023 when she was 18, The Des Moines Register reported. The cancer affects the lymphatic system.
The first sign that something was wrong came when she noticed her right eye wouldn’t open all the way.
“My right eye looked like I was like a broken doll,” she said.
The University of Miami student rushed to urgent care, where her right pupil ballooned in size — but several doctors dismissed her concerns.
“I went to five different doctors…and they said it was all stress,” she said. “It’s called the Horner syndrome when one pupil is bigger than the other, but they’re like, ‘Oh it’s just stress, you’re a college student, it’s nothing.'”
It wasn’t until she went to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami that doctors finally did a CT scan and found a tumor in her chest.
“Doctors were like, ‘We don’t know how you’re alive, we don’t know how you didn’t feel this,'” she said, before adding that some of her other symptoms included weight loss in her face and constant exhaustion.
“I just started chemo right away, and they said if I didn’t start, I would have died like within a couple months,” she said.
Now, she’s glad she trusted her intuition and is encouraging others to do the same.
“Please listen to your body and advocate for yourself,” she said. “Sometimes doctors are wrong.”
Viewers thanked her for sharing her video, but also expressed shock that so many medical professionals waved off her warning signs.
“No doctor should EVER dismiss unequal pupils,” one viewer wrote. “It is a very clear sign something neurological is going on.”
“Why do most doctors dismiss everything as stress or anxiety?!” another one commented.
Some might say her experience echoes a troubling trend where young women’s health concerns are minimized or misdiagnosed.
For instance, 23-year-old Lucy Younger was told her seizures and hallucinations were due to anxiety, only to later discover she had a brain tumor.
Similarly, 21-year-old Molly Smith’s persistent numbness was attributed to dehydration and anxiety before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Doctors also initially told tennis pro Gaby Dabrowski not to worry about a lump in her left breast — which turned out to be breast cancer.