For months, almost no one knew Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner had cancer

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner describes his bout with cancer in an interview at City Hall in Houston on Nov. 15, 2022. Turner revealed he received treatment for bone cancer after his State of the City address on Nov. 2, 2022. (Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune)

For more than four months, the mayor of the nation’s fourth-largest city let few people know he had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Not even his 35-year-old daughter was aware.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner publicly revealed his diagnosis during a Q&A after his annual State of the City address on Nov. 2 — months after an oncologist told him in June he had osteosarcoma. Turner had gone to the dentist with a toothache, which turned out to be from a tumor growing on his jaw.