Woman, 27, Was Told She Had Terminal Brain Cancer. Then, Something Incredible Happened

A woman who was once told she had terminal cancer has been called a medical miracle after her latest scans showed no visible sign of the disease.

In April 2024, 27-year-old Paige Suisted, from Kiwi, New Zealand, was living what she describes as a normal life, splitting her time between modeling and working at a local jeweler. Then she began to notice something was wrong: the fingers on her right hand started going numb, and soon the sensation spread to her arm and leg.

“My fingers kind of just stopped working,” Suisted told Daily Mail Australia, explaining that several doctors gave her completely different diagnoses. “One said I had a stroke, but didn’t even admit me to the hospital. Another said I had Raynaud’s disease, and one just put me in a sling. They all told me something completely different.”

As her symptoms worsened and her desperation grew, Suisted eventually called an ambulance and begged to be admitted so doctors could run proper tests. After weeks of CT scans, MRIs and finally a brain biopsy, she was diagnosed with stage-four astrocytoma, a terminal brain cancer more commonly seen in children.

“When they told me, I think I screamed and cried,” she recalled. “It was so hard to hear. I have a younger brother and sister, and all I could think about was wanting to see them grow up.”

Doctors discovered a golf ball-sized tumor pressing on the nerves that controlled the right side of her body. Surgery, they warned, carried enormous risk.

“It was a 50–50 chance it would work, and a 50–50 chance I’d be fully paralyzed, most likely not able to talk or walk again,” Suisted said. “So, we decided we weren’t doing that.”

Instead, she immediately began intensive treatment with radiation and chemotherapy.

“The terminal diagnosis broke a lot of us down. I thought I was going to die and there’s nothing anyone can do,” she said. “At the start of chemo, it really shot me down. I wasn’t even aware of what was going on.”

Over the next year, Suisted endured grueling side effects, many of which she shared openly on Instagram. Then, during a follow-up appointment, doctors noticed something unexpected on her scans.

“In my last few scans, there’s been nothing there,” she said. “This massive golf ball in my brain … we can’t see any of it on the MRIs.”

Because she hasn’t undergone surgery to confirm whether any cancer cells remain, Suisted can’t officially be declared cancer-free. Still, multiple specialists have described her case as a “medical anomaly,” and she is now focused on rebuilding her strength, independence and confidence while using her experience to support others facing serious illness.

“They haven’t had a cancer patient like this,” she said of her doctors. “They don’t even understand it themselves. I just live my life every day now, and I want to help other people.”