Kayla Lyall was 28 years old when her body began to fail her in 2024.
She was losing hair and weight, and got tired climbing a hill she had barely noticed before. In Vancouver, Canada, her doctors had only one answer: work stress, poor sleep, nothing serious. She changed her diet, slept better, and tried every supplement they recommended. Nothing changed, because the problem was never stress.
It was only when lumps appeared in her neck and armpit, when she began gasping at night and fainting, that someone said the phrase they should have said months earlier: something is wrong. On January 10, 2025, Kayla found a lump in her neck and, after an ultrasound performed on January 21, she needed a CT scan. Even so, the system wanted to make her wait six months for a CT scan. Kayla didn’t wait: she canceled appointments, changed doctors and, according to her own account, had to beg to be heard and get a scan for February. That is how the diagnosis came: stage II Hodgkin lymphoma, already spread.
Her original doctors only called her in June for the scan she had already gotten on her own months earlier. By then, she had been undergoing chemotherapy for four months, which she had started on March 12. Today, at 31, she is cancer-free — but wonders how many people like her didn’t have the strength to insist that they be heard in time.