Star Trek’s Kitty Swink Has Survived 20 Years Since Pancreatic Cancer (Exclusive) [Video]

In 2004, Star Trek actress Kitty Swink noticed that she was losing a lot of weight.

“I’m a naturally skinny person, so I didn’t think much of it,” she tells PEOPLE. “I also had back pain all the time, but I figured I was just stressed out.”

Swink, who mostly does stage performances and is married to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actor Armin Shimerman, had battled breast cancer when she was 38, so at Shimerman’s insistence, she went to the doctor for some bloodwork.

The day following her appointment, she says her urine had turned brown, and she got an urgent call from the doctor saying her kidneys and liver were shutting down.

“By the time I got to the emergency room, I was turning yellow with jaundice,” she says. A CT scan and a biopsy followed, and then the shocking news: at 49, she had pancreatic cancer.

“Seventeen days later, I came out of Cedars-Sinai with half …