Mom of 10 dies weeks after being diagnosed with cancer that strikes 1 in million
Angela Goodrich, 45, was shocked to be diagnosed with an extremely rare cancer. She shared her story and symptoms with TODAY.com before she passed away.
A mom of 10 has died weeks after being diagnosed with a rare cancer that began with a sensation of fullness in her belly. Angela Goodrich was 45.
She had just started chemotherapy and was exhausted after her first cycle of treatment, but wanted to be interviewed to spread awareness about the disease — adrenocortical carcinoma, a malignant tumor that started in her adrenal glands.
Only one in a million people is diagnosed in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute.
“It was definitely a huge shock … (but) we’re going to get it figured out,” Goodrich, who lived in Toquerville, Utah, told TODAY.com about her diagnosis.
“I think sharing in a journey binds people together and gives the information out to help other people as well.”
She died the next day, on Friday, April 25, surrounded by her husband, Matt, and all their children.
“It was a peaceful experience,” Matt Goodrich, 46, says. “We are so blessed to have had her in our life.”
The couple married after meeting in high school, and she gave birth to 10 kids — one son and nine daughters — who range in age from 7 to 26. Eight still live at home.
The couple also recently became grandparents when their son and daughter-in-law had twin boys, who recently turned 1.
The family was shaken by Angela Goodrich’s sudden diagnosis.
Mystery symptoms
Earlier this year, she noticed a fullness in her belly and swelling in her legs, but thought it was a reaction to coming off a medication for polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).
Her husband saw the changes, too: “The swelling was pretty bad,” he recalls.
When the family went on a cruise, Matt Goodrich also noticed his wife had shortness of breath climbing stairs and was experiencing abdominal pain.
“About a week before the cruise, I kind of had like this little flash in my head that it was possibly cancer. But I just kind of shook it off out of my mind,” Angela Goodrich recalled about wanting to stay positive and pushing away bad thoughts. “We’re not doing that kind of thing.”
She promised a family member she’d get checked out. When she went to an urgent care in early March, the blood test results were “very strange,” she said.
Her potassium levels were so dangerously low that her doctor urged her to go to the emergency room for an intravenous infusion of the electrolyte. Imaging tests were ordered, too.
After a CT scan, an ER doctor came in “and just kind of said, ‘Tumor this’ and ‘Tumor that,’” she recalled. “That’s how we found out.”
The diagnosis: Stage 4 adrenocortical carcinoma.
She had a baseball-size tumor on her adrenal gland, several tumors in her liver and several in her lungs that were marble to golf ball size. The cancer was aggressive and growing quickly, Matt Goodrich says.
