Hylton, a 30-year-old Peabody- and Emmy-winning reporter, said she wrote off early symptoms before a test showed the cancer.
Antonia Hylton, a Peabody and two-time Emmy Award winner reporting for NBC News, said she’s been treated for a rare form of cancer.
Hylton and her doctor, Nooshin Hosseini, appeared on Today this week to discuss her diagnosis. She said that for the past two years, she had stomach issues but wrote them off. With a career that kept her busy, she was focused on her job.
“I travel, I’m on planes [and] maybe I don’t have the best diet. But I love what I do, so it’s worth it, and I’m not going to let these symptoms hold me back,” she said in the video.
But as her symptoms got worse, Hylton saw a Today episode featuring her colleague Craig Melvin, who was speaking about his sibling, who battled colon cancer and died in 2020. Melvin noted that his older brother, Lawrence Meadows, ignored warning signs, and Hylton — recalling her family’s history of colon cancer — said that segment prompted her to get checked.
“I was waking up (and) my face was swollen,” she shared. “I was having trouble going to the bathroom for days on end.”
The test results showed Hylton had a neuroendocrine tumor, which can develop anywhere endocrine cells are present. Endocrine cells regulate metabolism and growth, among other bodily functions.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, neuroendocrine tumors affect about five in 100,000 people. Doctors diagnose about 12,500 cases each year, and 125,000 in the United States live with the tumors today. Early diagnosis and treatment are key, and in her video, Hylton noted doctors caught the disease in its early stages.
Hylton said on the video that her last scan shows she’s cancer-free, but she has learned a valuable lesson.
“I learned a really important lesson at 30 to listen to myself and to put myself first,” she said. “I love my job. I worked hard here at NBC, and I’m not going to stop doing that. But I’ve learned the lesson that I really need to put my health first and not push these things off.”
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