The popular American medical series titled Grey’s Anatomy released its pilot episode back in 2005 and it continues to air its twentieth season in 2023.
The show revolves around the personal and professional lives of doctors, interns, patients, and just about anybody who is a part of the show. We will be telling you about one beloved character of the show, Izzie, and in which episode she ended up getting cancer.
Set in the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, the show started off with a star-studded cast, including Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, Chandra Wilson, Patrick Dempsey, and a few others. The show obviously has a large cast of supporting actors, and over the years, a few of the original cast members have been replaced by new actors.
Fans know already that, for the most part, the series revolved around Ellen’s character, Meredith Grey, who kicked off her journey as an intern at the hospital, and we saw her grow into an experienced doctor.
Despite being the longest-running primetime series on ABC, Ellen recently announced her departure from the show, leaving fans a bit disappointed.
The show is loved by fans a lot and has mostly received positive reviews from critics who praise the creators for being able to come up with a show that explores the difficulties that people in the medical field face almost on a daily basis all over the world, along with their personal lives and conflicts that were so seamlessly intertwined in the series.
The show has received thirty-eight nominations for the Primetime Emmy Awards and has even received the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series-Drama.
Those who have still not watched the series could find the first season a bit lost and all over the place, but eventually, with the release of more seasons, the makers managed to find the direction where they wanted to take the show.
Over a span of twenty seasons, it only makes sense for the makers to introduce conflicts and heartbreaks to keep the spice going and the show interesting.
One such heartbreaking turn of events in the show was the character, Izzie Stevens, finding out that she had cancer. Let us tell you more about how it all rolled out.
What Episode Does Izzie Get Cancer?
While they had been dropping hints about it in the previous episodes, Izzie Stevens, played by Katherine Heigl, getting cancer and finding out about it was officially addressed in season 5, episode 17, where we find that her hallucinating Denny was not just her grief and unprocessed emotions and trauma trying to come out, but the fact that she had cancer.
Over the fifth season, her hallucinations had been getting worse, with Denny becoming a recurring character because of it. Turns out it was her body telling her something was wrong with her, considering she associated Denny’s sudden loss with death.
The episode reveals her to be suffering from “stage IV metastatic melanoma with metastases to her liver, brain, and skin.” This explained the auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations she had been having, also throwing in the fact that she only had a five percent chance of survival.
But being surrounded by doctors and being a doctor herself, she was going to be treated with the best care possible, and from episode 17 to episode 22, she was shown to be in a recovery state. She was operated on by Derek, who performed brain surgery on her successfully.
Though this first treatment was nicely done, and Derek had completely removed the tumor from her temporal lobe, things got messed up for Izzie once again.
After her operation, she had begun focusing on Meredith and Dereks’ wedding preparations, but somewhere in season 5, episode 22, she ended up having hallucinations once again.
She saw Denny once more, and these hallucinations confirmed to her that there was another possible tumor growing inside her.
But with the wedding coming up, an event Izzie seemed thoroughly excited about, she decided it best to focus on it fully. The wedding, in a way, helped Izzie get over the grief and trauma she had been associating with Denny.
And right after the wedding, she had undergone a second surgery, once again the tumor being successfully completely removed. There were some more complications after the surgery, one involving Izzie not breathing and her body going limp.
But since she had signed a DNR, the doctors at first felt like they could not do anything to save her, but within moments it was Richard Webber, who decided to “screw the DNR”, eventually proceeding to save the limp Izzie.
Thankfully, Izzie came back alive and even recovered, with the makers not messing with her story arc anymore and giving her an almost happy ending.
Also Read: What Episode Does Ellis Grey Die in Grey’s Anatomy? Explained
