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A metastatic cancer diagnosis didn’t stop this grad from completing her degree

Aziza Sattarova recently published a memoir about her thyroid cancer diagnosis and how she got by with help from the Northeastern community.

A young woman with glasses sitting on a pink couch, holding a blue book (her memoir) while smiling at the camera.
Northeastern graduate Aziza Sattarova recently published a memoir, “Foe Within Me,” about her fight with metastatic thyroid cancer. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Aziza Sattarova was 21 years old and studying pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern University when she received a devastating diagnosis: she had metastatic thyroid cancer.

At the time, Sattarova was living the normal, busy life of a typical college student. She was doing research in associate professor Jeffrey Agar’s lab and working part-time as an EMT for an ambulance company in Arlington, Massachusetts. 

But when her exhaustion and physical weakness started to affect her work as an EMT, she knew something was wrong. 

“I was just so weak and I was always tired,” Sattarova says. “I thought it was normal … for a student and part-time worker. … But compared to my colleagues, I was slow (and) very weak.”

Sattarova told her mother, who took her to an urgent care center. There, the doctor noticed lumps in Sattarova’s neck, but she had previously been told they were normal. The doctor thought otherwise. After two weeks of tests and scans, Sattarova was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer in January 2022, during her third year at Northeastern.

However, Sattarova was determined to continue her studies. With the help of Northeastern, she was able to attend her classes virtually from the hospital. Last year, she finished her degree and earlier this year, she published a book about her experience.

“I’m just thankful how easy it was,” Sattarova adds. “Northeastern didn’t make me feel that everything’s overwhelming. It was uplifting. It just made everything so much easier. I had the best experience at Northeastern.”

After her diagnosis, Sattarova began treatment quickly, given the extent of her disease. She underwent radiation therapy followed by surgery.

“It was very abrupt,” says Sattarova, who came to Boston from her home country of Uzbekistan. “I didn’t know if I should still study. … I didn’t know if I should go back to my country. I didn’t know if I should start treatment. I still registered for classes. I always loved to study and it was my own way of coping.”

She received extensions on her assignments as she juggled studying with radiation treatments.

Sattarova’s academic adviser helped her plan her coursework and find the forms in case she needed to apply for medical leave as she began treatment. Her program adviser, assistant pharmaceutical sciences professor Leigh Plant, worked with other faculty members to devise a course of study for Sattarova that would allow her to finish her degree at a pace that would accommodate her treatment.

“I met Aziza as a first-year student and it was immediately obvious that she was a really curious and engaged scientist who had a passion for learning and discovery,” Plant says. “She was really interested in running experiments to understand how all different aspects of life and health care work. She had a lot of questions, passion and vigor. When she got her diagnosis, I worked with her so that she could meet her goals. She was very determined. She said very clearly: ‘Whatever happens, I will be an educated woman.’”

Plant “showed up in so many ways,” as Sattarova puts it, including checking in weekly as she received treatment far from home, something that added another challenge for her.

But Sattarova said Northeastern faculty and staff helped guide her through her health insurance and medical paperwork, on top of her academics, so she could do what she needed to get her degree.

“I saw (college) as a business transaction,” Sattarova says. “You study, you pay for classes and they give you classes. They don’t owe you anything. And yet, all I saw was how they cared about me, not just my academic performance. All they told me about is to think about your health first. Forget about academics. Forget about classes. It was community. It was definitely heartwarming and they didn’t make me feel alone.”

Sattarova graduated in 2024 with a degree in pharmaceutical sciences and was a featured speaker at the Bouve College of Health Sciences ceremony. She is now pursuing a graduate degree in pathology at Boston University as she continues to receive cancer treatments. 

“I was really glad to see that,” Plant says of Sattarova finishing her degree. “I could not imagine navigating everything she needed to navigate to get to where she was. I was incredibly proud.”

Even as a patient, Sattarova was in scientist mode, documenting everything about her disease and treatment “like a mad scientist.” She used this to begin writing a book about her experience, titled “Foe Within Me: A Case Study of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma with Diffusing Sclerosis and RET Rearrangement.” 

“I didn’t set out to write a book,” she says. “I was trying to survive, but I tracked everything. It was my only way of holding on to something solid. I was a scientist to my core. But I realized I’ve never really truly processed what I went through and that’s, you know, how the book helped me.”

Sattarova describes her book as part memoir and part reflection where she looks at her experience as both a person and a scientist. It traces her life from her upbringing in Uzbekistan to her coming to Boston to her diagnosis. She even talks about her time at Northeastern, saying “It wasn’t just a university. It was a place that didn’t let me fall through.”

Sattarova also takes a scientific perspective on the disease in her writing. She hopes it reaches other cancer patients as a source of comfort.

“I wanted to show the resilience and fragility of a human body,” she says. “I wanted to explore what it’s like to live in a body that can both betray you and save you. The illness doesn’t erase you. Sometimes it just helps you to see yourself more clearly.”