MIAMI (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Every year, almost 1.5 million Americans hear the words, "you have cancer." some are told their tumor is too difficult to remove, but one group of surgeons has opened a new door by taking the word inoperable out of the equation.

Brooke Zepp loves to travel. Last year, as she was planning a trip around the world, she got devastating news.

"I never dreamed I'd have cancer, and when they told me I had a mass, I said, 'Okay, so just take it out,'" Zepp told Ivanhoe.

But taking it out could kill her. The tumor was buried in the vessels that bring blood to her abdominal organs. Doctors gave her six months to live.

"When they told me they couldn't treat me, that was the worst moment of my life," she recalled.

In her search for answers, Zepp found surgeon Tomoaki Kato, M.D., at the time a transplant surgeon at the University of Miami Hospital.

"The only treatment that can cure the tumor was to remove it," Dr. Kato, now a transplant surgeon at Columbia University in New York, New York, explained

To get to Zepp's tumor, he'd have to remove six of her organs. In a world's first, Zepp's stomach, pancreas, liver, spleen, small intestine and most of her large intestine were taken out … simultaneously.

"She had nothing in her body," Dr. Kato described. "It's essentially organ-less."