It was August of 1997 when interior-design student Sabrina Bronson came to see Dr. Gordon.  She was 19 years old and about to enter her second year of college.
At 18 she had discovered a small lump in her left hand, located next to her little finger.  Initially, she and her family thought it was a cyst, but when it began to grow, they became concerned.  Her mother, Dr. Gordon's hair stylist, mentioned it to him, and he suggested that Sabrina come and see him about it.  Soon after, she flew up from San Diego to meet with him.
Dr. Gordon, too, thought it was a cyst, and Sabrina decided to go in for surgery.
Following surgery, Sabrina woke up, surprised to find the lump still there.  Dr. Gordon reported to her that when he had gone into her hand to do the surgery, he saw immediately that the lump was not a cyst but in fact a tumor.  Rather than disturb it, he had done a biopsy instead.
Approximately one week later Sabrina got her results back:  It was cancer.
Dr. Gordon then referred Sabrina to an oncologist, Dr. Alan Kramer, and made ongoing observations of the tumor as Sabrina progressed through chemotherapy and radiation.  After the tumor shrank sufficiently, it needed to be removed so that it could not spread.  Very likely she would lose a good deal of her hand.
"Somehow," Sabrina says, "Dr. Gordon worked magic, and I didn't lose my hand.  Only the one finger was removed."
With hand therapy, Sabrina recovered most of the movement in her hand.  Recovery time was quick, she says, taking "only about a couple of months until my hand was fine and I was back to normal."  Significantly, she has had no recurrence of the cancer.
"Basically, Dr. Gordon saved my life," she says.  "If the tumor had been disturbed during that first operation, it would have spread throughout my body.  I was very lucky, because I don't believe most doctors would have recognized the tumor for what it was."