Being kicked off a plane is normally the type of thing that happens to criminals or people discovered to have a highly contagious disease. But on Monday, Elizabeth Sedway, from California, says she felt like she was being treated as such, despite the fact she had cancer.

Sedway and her family were forced off an Alaska Airlines flight to San Jose from Hawaii on Monday after a flight attendant insisted Sedway have a doctor’s note to fly. The incident began when Sedway was sitting in the handicap section of the airline’s boarding area. An employee asked Sedway, who suffers from the blood cancer multiple myeloma and was wearing a surgical mask to protect herself from germs, if she needed anything, to which she answered “no.” When Sedway was asked a second time, she said that she “might need a bit of extra time to board,” since she sometimes feels “weak.”

This interaction led to a “communication breakdown,” Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Bobbie Egan told NBC Bay Area. Once Sedway and her family had boarded the plane, a flight attendant told her she wouldn’t be able to fly unless she had a doctor’s note — the precautions were taken to ensure she didn’t collapse while in the air. You can see video of the interaction here.

“It was shocking. I mean I’ve flown, we’ve flown for five years with this diagnosis, and I felt humiliated,” she told CBS San Francisco. She also said that she had exchanged emails with her oncologist before flying, and that he had cleared her for travel. The incident caused Sedway to miss her chemotherapy appointment on Tuesday.

Aside from an apology, the airline has also promised to refund the airfare for the family as well as reimburse any expenses.