‘I Thought I Had a UTI—Instead, It Was Stage 4 Cancer’

In 2024, Emma Operacz, who is now 23, was a typical college senior at Eastern Michigan University. She was in a sorority, had a great group of friends and was working as a barista. Her life was full—and busy. But everything changed when she started experiencing symptoms of what she thought was a urinary tract infection (UTI).

“I had UTIs before, so I didn’t really think anything of it,” Operacz tells Parade. As she’d done in the past, she went to the urgent care near her university and treated it with antibiotics and an over-the-counter pain reliever. But the symptoms didn’t go away. In fact, Operacz was still experiencing them a month later and they’d gotten worse. “I had a fever for almost a week straight, had pain in my right side and couldn’t get out of bed,” she says.

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Together, Operacz and her mom went to see Operacz’s primary care doctor. Little did she know that this would be the beginning of a health journey that resulted in a rare cancer diagnosis and a fight for her life.

Parade spoke with Operacz about her health journey, including how she finally received a diagnosis after a month of other doctors being stumped, and how she’s doing now. Plus, what she hopes everyone will take away from her health journey. 

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Searching for a Diagnosis

At her appointment with her primary care doctor, Operacz’s doctor couldn’t figure out what was causing Operacz’s symptoms to persist. That led to more doctors’ visits; one with a gynecologist and another with a urogynecologist. 

“The urogynecologist did a pelvic exam and said my pelvic lymph nodes were really swollen,” Operacz says. 

Operacz was transferred to the emergency room, where she was given antibiotics, pain medication and underwent an ultrasound.

“I peed in a cup for the millionth time and had another pelvic exam, which hurt so bad,” Operacz says. Still puzzled, the emergency room doctors admitted her to the hospital. “They told me very nonchalantly that I either had an infection or lymphoma,” she recalls.

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Operacz didn’t think she had lymphoma, which is a cancer that affects the lymphatic system. “I was 21 and just did not see that being in my deck of cards,” she tells Parade.

Operacz stayed in the hospital for four days, running a fever the entire time. She says her mom and older sister stayed with her almost entirely, sharing, “My sister is a teacher, so she would teach during the day and spend the nights with me at the hospital.”

After four days and at the urging of Operacz’s sister and her aunt, who is a kidney surgeon, the doctors performed a biopsy to screen for cancer. The test came back positive and Operacz was diagnosed with Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma. 

It took one month from when Operacz first started experiencing symptoms for her to be diagnosed. “Even though I was diagnosed with cancer, part of me was relieved to finally have an answer,” Operacz explains.

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A Long, Hard Fight to Remission

Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma is an advanced, aggressive cancer where cancerous cells have spread to other parts of the body outside the lymphatic system. According to Operacz, her original treatment plan was to do chemotherapy once a month, for six months.

“The doctors said I would still be able to go to class, work and live a pretty normal life,” Operacz says, adding that she was about to start her last semester of college. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened.

Before her first chemotherapy appointment was even scheduled, Operacz’s health took a turn for the worse. She was staying at her sister’s apartment and started throwing up in the middle of the night. The lymph nodes in her neck felt swollen and Operacz was in excruciating pain. “I felt like my lymph nodes had exploded throughout my whole body. I couldn’t move my neck. I couldn’t walk,” she reveals.

Operacz took an ambulance to the hospital and the doctors started chemotherapy and gave her pain medications, and the chemotherapy immediately helped relieve her symptoms. “I felt so much better and had really high hopes that the chemo was working,” she says. Operacz stayed at the hospital for a couple of days. Her symptoms (and her scans) continued to improve. Then, she was released.

Unfortunately, this upturn didn’t last. Over the next few months, Operacz says she never lasted more than five days out of the hospital because her symptoms kept coming back. “Either I had an infection or I needed a blood transfusion because my immune system was so shot,” she explains.

Operacz felt defeated. She couldn’t work or go to class. She had stopped texting her friends and no longer felt remotely like herself. Still, her family was there for her every step of the way. Then, they received devastating news. The cancer had spread to Operacz’s brain and was in her central nervous system. This caused Operacz to experience terrible migraines. 

“At that point, my doctors didn’t know what to do,” Operacz tells Parade. In the meantime, she was getting weaker. Operacz and her family reached out to an oncologist at Toledo Cancer Center, who ultimately referred Operacz to Cleveland Clinic, where she stayed for roughly a month. 

During this time, Operacz underwent chemotherapy, which was not working. Then, Operacz’s doctor, Dr. Deepa Jagadeesh, MD, who specializes in lymphoma, put her on an immunotherapy drug called Alectinib, which is typically used to treat non-small cell lung cancer. To everyone’s relief, Operacz’s symptoms started to improve. She was released to the hospital, following instructions to continue taking the Alectinib as well as steroids and several other medications, and had to stay nearby so she could come in for regular bloodwork and monitoring.

Slowly, Operacz started to rebuild her strength. In September 2025—a year and a half after being diagnosed—Dr. Jagadeesh told Operacz that she was officially in remission.

This still wasn’t the end of Operacz’s cancer battle. She had to go through more chemotherapy, radiation and needed a bone marrow transplant because cancer was in her bone marrow. When her sister tested positive as a 50% match, the siblings began the transplant process.

“It was [two months] of appointments and then the surgery,” Operacz says. The transplant surgery took place on November 8, 2025 (the day after Operacz’s 22nd birthday) and was successful. 

Adapting to a ‘New Normal’ 

Adapting to life after cancer hasn’t been easy for Operacz, as she explains she had to grieve that she didn’t get to finish her final semester of college with her friends. “I decided to transfer to a new college because I’m just not the person I was when I went to Eastern Michigan anymore,” she says. 

Operacz reveals it’s taken time for her to think through what her next steps should be and find her purpose again. “There were some really dark days,” she tells Parade. Now, she’s seeing a therapist to work through the trauma she experienced in the past two years. “The hardest part isn’t the cancer. It’s rebuilding afterwards,” she explains.

But Operacz is rebuilding. In December, she graduated with a degree in psychology and is now getting her master’s in social work at Cleveland State University. “My life is good. I have an amazing family, I have a boyfriend now and my sister is pregnant. I’m working toward a career that I’m passionate about and I’m excited for the future,” she says.

Operacz shares that the biggest lesson she hopes people will take away from her health journey is to never stop advocating for yourself. “Fight for answers. If one doctor doesn’t have them, go to another one. Don’t give up,” she says. 

Operacz is optimistic that the days spent fighting for her health are over. Instead, she’s focused on living and working toward a career that will help others find the light in their darkest days.

“There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel,” Operacz says. “It might take a long time to find it sometimes, but there’s always a light.”

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Sources:

• Lymphoma. Cleveland Clinic
• T-cell lymphoma. Mayo Clinic