‘I Had an Anxiety Attack Before College Finals but It Was Pancreatic Cancer’

Toni Bravo, 21, thought she was having an anxiety attack a couple of weeks before finals at The University of  Notre Dame in December 2023. She went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that same day. Last summer, she had surgery to remove the tumor and is now cancer-free and finishing her senior year. Below, she shares her story with PEOPLE to encourage others to go to the doctor immediately if something feels wrong.

In the fall 2023, I started developing anxiety. I was a junior at the University of Notre Dame and had never had anxiety before.

For several months, I’d had a high heart rate and tight chest. My heart rate would be really fast and I’d have trouble breathing regularly. When I talked to my mother about it, she said there was a time when she was younger that she had dealt with anxiety too, and then after a year or two it went away. So I just thought it was normal.

But one day in December 2023, about two weeks before finals, I was having a really bad anxiety attack. It started the night prior and went through to the next day, which had never happened. Normally, if I had anxiety at nighttime, once I went to sleep and woke up in the morning, it would be gone.

But this time when I woke up, my anxiety was still heightened. Just walking 10 steps to the bathroom would increase my heart rate to the point where I was really uncomfortable. I called my mom and I was like, “I can’t get rid of my anxiety today. I don’t know what’s going on.” She said, “Well, if it makes you feel better, and it probably will, you should just go to the emergency room. They’ll help you calm down, tell you that you’re okay, give you some scans, and then hopefully you’ll be fine.” So I listened to her, and I took myself to the emergency room at a hospital near campus that day.

They got me in really quickly, and they’re like, “Okay, your heart rate is obviously elevated, but we’ll do CT scans of your chest just to make sure that there’s nothing blocking the heart, there’s no clots, whatever.” After they ran the initial CT scans, they came back and said that one of the radiologists had seen something on the very bottom of the scan. They ordered a CT scan of my abdomen.

I was alone at the hospital when the doctor came in to tell me the results. He was like, “I don’t really know a lot about this, because it looks rare from what I’ve looked up about it, but you have cancer.” I was 20 years old. [Her birthday is March 27, 2003.]

His exact words were, “It’s a really rare tumor on your pancreas.” He said he hadn’t seen it in his career before personally, but that I was going to have to get surgery to remove it. He let me know, like a heads-up: “We don’t do that surgery here, so you would have to go back home in California to get it done.”

I took my finals, I went home to Los Angeles for winter break. Over break, I had my first appointment at City of Hope. I got my CT scans, and  I met with my surgeon Dr. Laleh Melstrom who confirmed the diagnosis. She told me, “It is a rare tumor on the pancreas. It is treated with surgery, there is no other way to treat it. It’s very well behaving — once you get it out, it pretty much stays gone.”

It relieved much of my stress to know that once I had the surgery, statistically, I should be done. That helped me calm down about the whole diagnosis. Dr. Melstrom was very, very flexible with the timing of my surgery.

She said, “Do you want to finish college before we do the surgery, or would you like to get it done this summer?” I was so focused on getting it out of my body. I was just like, “No, the soonest that I can get surgery, I want to get surgery.” Because that was weird — knowing and being aware of it in my body.

I ended up going through the spring semester of my junior year with the tumor. I got out of school in May, and spent a month preparing for my surgery. I hung out with friends, I went swimming, I went to the beach, I went to Disneyland, I did all the things that I loved to do that I knew wasn’t going to be as easy to do after the surgery. I went on a road trip for a weekend with my friends up to Big Sur. I went to Vegas. I knew that after surgery I was going to be in bed for a lot of the time.

I had robotic Whipple surgery on June 4th, 2024. The Robotic Whipple procedure involves removing the head of the pancreas, part of the small intestine, gall bladder and bile duct. The robotic surgery allows a smaller incision and quicker recovery.

The 24 hours before the surgery were probably the most nerve-wracking for me. The night before, I was full of a lot of emotions. I didn’t show it to anyone, but at night before I went to sleep, I started crying because I was getting scared. I knew I was in very trusted and good hands, but anything can happen at any moment. And my surgery was a big surgery and a long surgery.

I remember praying that if I did not make it through surgery, then that was meant to be. And if I did make it through the surgery, then I knew I was meant for something better and something great in my life. I feel like hard times bring you closer to your faith. So I was praying a lot, and I told God I was okay either way, whatever happened.

After the surgery, I was in the hospital for about a week. I underestimated how hardcore the recovery process was going to be. Physical therapy was a big thing for me. After surgery, I had a lot of pain in my lower abdomen and where the surgery was done. So I made sure that I was getting out of bed and walking and building up my stamina.

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A big part of the Whipple procedure is diet. My gallbladder was also taken out, so that changes your diet a lot. I try to eat really clean, high protein and low-fat foods. I cant eat fried foods, either. The dieticians helped me understand the new way I had to learn to eat.

I was in the hospital for seven days, and then I went home for about four days. And I was trying to increase my food intake probably faster than I should have, and my stomach wasn’t ready for that. So I ended up having to go back to City of Hope, and I stayed for another four days. They just wanted to make sure I was digesting food correctly. Then I was able to go home for good.

I only had to have surgery, I didn’t have to have chemo — which I’m forever grateful for.

I don’t know why I got this cancer. No one has ever had pancreatic cancer in my family. Really, cancer isn’t even a thing in my family. Only one person besides me has had cancer, and it was breast cancer. It’s just a really rare thing. When I looked it up, I learned my diagnosis is more common in minority communities. So maybe that’s why — I’m Mexican, I’m Latino on both sides.

As new cancer data has come out, younger people are getting diagnosed. The age range that people are getting cancer is getting younger, and we need to have a way for people to find out. That’s why it’s super important for early detection tests for pancreatic cancer.

Recently City of Hope received a gift from Emmett and Tessa Stephenson for $150 million to further pancreatic research, I was thrilled when I heard about that, it was shortly after my surgery. So I feel like it will go towards just helping more people, and hopefully get early detection tests created.

Another really big thing for me since I’ve had cancer is telling my close friends, “Please, please, please, if you ever feel like something is wrong, go to the doctor.” I don’t want them to put off if they’re ever feeling like something’s wrong, because I care about my friends. I feel like it’s made me more of an advocate for being proactive.

I got lucky that I decided to take myself to the emergency room that day because of my anxiety. Otherwise, I don’t know when the doctors would’ve found it. And potentially, I would’ve had the same luck that a lot of pancreatic cancer patients have: They catch it late and it’s harder to deal with it.

As far as the anxiety, that was something that I truly believe was my body trying to tell me something is wrong and I needed to go get it checked. It’s why I always say, you should listen to your body, your body knows when something isn’t right. Because after I got diagnosed, my anxiety went away, it just vanished, I haven’t had episodes of anxiety since then. 

After the surgery was done, they did a biopsy of the tumor, and I caught it so early that there had been no active cancer cells in it, which was great. I’m cancer-free, which is amazing. I’m getting CT scans every six months for the next couple of years, just making sure that nothing changes and I stay the same, the way I am right now: Healthy.