When an eagle-eyed viewer noticed something on TV journalist Victoria Price’s neck during a televised segment last month, the woman sent her a short, cryptic email.
“I just saw your news report,” the viewer wrote to Ms. Price, an investigative reporter for WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida. “What concerns me is the lump in my neck. Please check your thyroid.
“It reminds me of my neck,” added the viewer. “Mine turned out to be cancer.”
Mrs. Price listened to the advice: a week later, she saw her doctor. That visit was followed by a first round of blood tests and an ultrasound, which she said was “suspicious.” Then came a referral for a thyroid specialist. On Tuesday, she learned that she had thyroid cancer and that it was spreading to her lymph nodes.
Price, 28, shared the news this week with viewers.
“My reaction was like, ‘OK, what’s the game plan?'” He said in an interview on Friday. “Let’s do this”.
Price said he had surgery Monday to remove the tumor, thyroid and some nearby lymph nodes. In a tweet, he explained that the tumor was in the middle of the thyroid, “pushing the glands up and out, hence the subtle bulge.”
She shared a screenshot from one of her live reports to show the bulge.
Ms. Price said she had been fatigued in the past few months and that she “felt bad,” but she attributed it to stress and worked hard to cover the coronavirus pandemic from her NBC station.
She said she was grateful for the woman who sent her an email.
“If I had never received that email, I would never have called my doctor,” Price said on Twitter. “The cancer would have continued to spread. It is a terrifying and humiliating thought. “
She said in the interview that she emailed the viewer this week to thank her but had received no response.
More than 52,000 new cases of thyroid cancer are diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society. Women are more than three times as likely to develop cancer as men. The association noted that until recently, thyroid cancer was “the fastest growing cancer” due to increased detection.
Dr. Dennis Kraus, vice president of otorhinolaryngology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said a lump like Mrs. Price would generally be found during a doctor’s office examination or ultrasound or other type of examination. looking for other medical problems. .
“Someone will have an evaluation for a CT scan or an MRI and a thyroid nodule will be collected,” said Dr. Kraus. “It is often a very incidental finding. Often, apart from his presence, he is asymptomatic. “
Surgery is the main treatment for thyroid cancer, with or without radioactive iodine therapy, he said.
When told about Ms. Price, Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, said, “In terms of screening, that’s an interesting story. Of course, simple visual detection, particularly through the media, is probably not sensitive or specific. “
He added that if people suspect they have unusual neck masses, they should have them checked by a healthcare provider.
Still, Dr. Galea credited the woman who saw the lump on Mrs. Price’s neck. “Congratulations to the alert viewer!” he said.
It is not the first time that an enthusiastic viewer has detected a medical problem from a television personality.
In April 2019, Deborah Norville, host of the syndicated news program “Inside Edition,” underwent surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid nodule from her neck. She said she had been monitoring the lump after a viewer noticed it on her neck and caught her eye long ago.
“We live in a world of ‘seeing something, saying something,’ and I am so glad that we do,” Norville said in a video message.
In 2013, a viewer noticed a lump on the neck of Tarek El Moussa, host of the HGTV reality series “Flip or Flop,” and notified the show’s producers, who insisted that he visit a doctor. Mr. El Moussa had thyroid cancer and had his thyroid and lymph nodes removed with surgery and was treated with iodine radiation therapy, according to the “Today” program.
