MY DIAGNOSIS What Was Going On With My Neck?

An oncology nurse treated her patients throughout the worst days of the pandemic—but a golf ball-size lump was a clue to her own crisis.

- SHEILA PALACIOS, MARISA COHEN

For the first part of my career I traveled around the world taking care of Olympic-caliber horses. But in 2012, when I was 32, I decided I wanted more stability. Inspired by my mom, who was a nurse, I became a nurse too, near my South Florida home.

In April 2020, just after the pandemic began, my husband was laid off and I had to take a second job. As I was going through a pre-employment screening to work at a hospice provider, the nurse who examined me said my neck looked thick. She ordered extra labs to make sure everything was OK.

Nothing alarming came back, so I chalked it up to my being very muscular from years of horseback riding. My throat was a little dry, but I thought that was from wearing a mask all the time. Also I was tired, but as a night-shift nurse, I operated like an exhausted pigeon most of the time. Nothing seemed really wrong.

My main concern at that point was taking care of my patients in the oncology department at Good Samaritan Medical Center. The pandemic was raging, and because they were going through chemo, they had weak immune systems. They had to trust that we would provide care without giving them COVID-19, so I was very careful to entirely cover myself with personal protective equipment. Then one day about five months after that employment screening, I was washing my hands at work and looked in the mirror as I coughed—I saw a lump that looked like a small golf ball sticking out of my neck. If my neck hadn't been one of the only exposed parts of my body, I don't know if I would have noticed it.

A LIFESAVING DIAGNOSIS