Brazilian medical student discovered she had cancer in class: here is how she overcame it 

Gabriella Barboza, a Brazilian medical student, was practicing physical examinations for early cancer detection during a class in 2020. Her professor, physician Daniel Lichtenthaler, asked her to participate in the scan and, upon palpating her neck, realized there was something unusual.

"I was asked to participate in class where he was going to explain to us the technique for palpating the thyroid. I think he was afraid to talk at the time, but I noticed that something didn't seem normal to him. [At the end of the class] I asked him if he had noticed anything different while he was palpating my neck, and he said, 'There's something there, take a look,'" the young woman said in a recent interview with the BBC.

After her professor’s warning, Gabriella, a 22-year-old resident of São Paulo, decided to go to the doctor for tests. She was finally diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC).

"When I found out, my world fell apart. I kept thinking: I'm too young to deal with this. I cried a lot, and I didn't want to believe it. It's a moment when you see that things can end," the young woman told the British media.

Gabriella underwent the first phase of treatment in November 2020 in São Paulo, where her thyroid was removed along with other peripheral tumors in her neck.

In January 2021, she underwent iodine therapy, in which doctors used radioactive isotopes to eliminate the remaining cancer cells. Barboza was declared cured of cancer in 2021 and now undergoes semi-annual check-ups to make sure there is no relapse.

"After months of struggle, I want to put on record this extraordinary moment in my life, which made me a better person and made me see the world differently. I was reborn. And now a new cycle begins," she wrote on her Instagram profile, where she received many comments celebrating the diagnosis.

Gabriella also remembers her teacher's warning during class and considers that experience and her treatment period were learning moments.

"I always wanted to be a doctor to take care of others and heal people, no matter the specialty. But after what I went through as a patient, I think the perspective changes," she said.

PTC is the most common type of thyroid cancer. This condition affects about 200,000 Americans each year, most of them between the ages of 30 and 50, although it is more common in women than in men, according to the National Cancer Institute, quoted by the New York Post.