In late summer 2011, Kathleen Zavatsky, 65, of Oakley, noticed a troubling stitch in her side: “It reminded me of being a kid and running too fast and getting that startling pain in your side,” she recalls.
She mentioned the unexplained pain to her OB/GYN, which resulted in imaging tests that revealed a cancerous mass in her liver. She had no risk factors for the disease; doctors estimated that the tumor could have been there for up to three years without displaying physical symptoms.