Grey's Anatomy (2005): Two Cancer Storylines

Shonda Rhimes's hospital drama has followed surgical trainees at a Seattle teaching hospital for two decades. Two cancer stories stand out, and they are almost opposites.

Spoilers throughout. Discussing these storylines means discussing how they end.

In season five, resident Izzie Stevens is being checked over for something dull when the results come back wrong. The answer is stage 4 melanoma, a skin cancer that has already spread to her liver, her skin and her brain. The hallucinations she has been hiding turn out to be tumors in the brain. She has her eggs collected and frozen before treatment starts. Derek Shepherd removes one brain tumor, then finds a second. She is given a harsh immune drug called interleukin-2. Her heart stops, and her friends restart it, against the do-not-resuscitate order she had signed. She lives, is eventually told she is cancer-free, and is written out of the show.

A decade later, in season fifteen, hospital board chair Catherine Fox plays down neck and back pain until she cannot. Scans show a grade III chondrosarcoma, a cancer of cartilage and bone, wrapped around her spine. Surgeons take it out in pieces, opening her from the front as well as the back. They knowingly leave a fragment behind. She does not die. She lives on with disease still in her, with repeat scans and a long recovery she resents.

Several things in Izzie's story are right. Melanoma really can turn up when tests done for another reason look wrong. Tumors in the brain really do show as hallucination, a change in personality, or a seizure, rather than as headache. Collecting eggs before treatment that may harm the ovaries is real practice. Raising it early matters, because the window shuts once treatment starts. Interleukin-2 was a real melanoma drug of that era, and the show is honest that it is brutal. The fight over her do-not-resuscitate order is a real conflict, not an invented one.

The ending is where the show cheats. In that era, stage 4 melanoma in the liver and in several parts of the brain was very rarely curable. Yet Izzie gets a clean scan within a season, and the subject is then mostly dropped. Cancer doctors at the time also queried giving interleukin-2 to someone with brain tumors, because of the swelling it can cause. Diagnosis, tests, surgery and drugs are squeezed into weeks. She stays sharp, funny and on her feet the whole way through.

The later arc is the better one, and it is better for an unglamorous reason: nothing is resolved.

A senior doctor plays down her own symptoms for months. A tumor cannot be taken out whole. A piece is left in on purpose, because removing it would cost her the use of her spine. Then comes an open-ended life of check-up scans, a body that no longer works as it did, and a career she has to rebuild.

Living with cancer, rather than being cured of it or dying of it, is now the reality for a great many people. Network drama almost never shows it, because there is no ending to build an episode around.

Here the page has to say something uncomfortable about where television gets its authenticity.

At the time, Catherine's story was widely reported as drawn from real life. Elisabeth Finch, a writer and producer on the show, said she had a spinal tumor like Catherine's. Finch later admitted to the trade publication The Ankler that she never had chondrosarcoma, or any form of cancer at all. The 2024 documentary series Anatomy of Lies set out the whole deception.

The point is not gossip. It is that "based on a real patient" is not a mark of quality. A story can feel true, be praised by viewers who have the disease, and still rest on nothing. Judge the medicine on the medicine.

Melanoma usually starts as a change in the skin. The CDC's ABCDE prompt is the standard way to describe what to look for:

• Asymmetrical: the mole or spot has an irregular shape, and the halves look different.
• Border: the border is jagged.
• Color: the color is uneven.
• Diameter: the mole or spot is larger than a pea.
• Evolving: it has changed over the past few weeks or months.

A mole that itches, bleeds or weeps also deserves a look. So does a new spot that looks like none of your others. And melanoma is not limited to skin the sun reaches. It turns up on the scalp, the soles of the feet, the palms, and under the nails. That is one reason it is sometimes found late on darker skin.

There is no melanoma screening programme for people at average risk. In April 2023 the US Preventive Services Task Force looked at whether a doctor checking your skin does more good than harm when you have no symptoms. It found there was not enough evidence to say. That is called an I statement, and it means unproven rather than useless. NCI puts the same finding more bluntly. Skin checks used as screening have not been shown to cut deaths.

That is not permission to ignore a changing mole. It means the pathway is symptom-led. Noticing a change and reporting it is what finds melanoma early.

Catherine's cancer, chondrosarcoma, is a bone sarcoma. There is no screening test for that either. Bone sarcomas are found when someone looks into bone pain or a swelling that will not go away and has no clear cause. That is exactly the step Catherine spends months avoiding.

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Grey's Anatomy is entertainment that borrows the furniture of medicine. It is at its best when it stops looking for an ending, and at its worst when it needs one. If a mole has changed, or a pain has not shifted in weeks, the useful move is an appointment, not a comparison with a character. Grey's Anatomy cannot tell you what to watch for, but screening and possible warning signs can.

This page discusses Grey's Anatomy for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care. Spotted an error? Please email [email protected].