86 | HealthLinksSC.com A Unique Case: FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING LIVING AN ACTIVE LIFE WITH CANCER THE DONNA CAROLE KITCHENS STORY By Amy Gesell “I don’t know how people who don’t have faith get from one day to the next. Whether I’m healed in this life or the next, I must live with hope. I have to live expecting that my life still has good and that it matters.” Donna Carole Kitchens, mother and grandmother, or Bibi as she is called, has striking green eyes and a joyful disposition. She also has metastatic breast cancer. Five years ago, she self-diagnosed a pain in her side as gallbladder issues. “I had this pain in my side for about a month. It would get very intense, then disappear. Like so many women, I didn’t feel like I had time to deal with an illness,” Kitchens laughed. “So, I did the next best thing: I consulted Dr. Google and decided that I was having gallbladder issues.” Returning from a trip to Atlanta, Kitchens had a sudden onset of pain so unbearable, her need for relief was urgent. “I called my husband and daughter to let them know I was headed straight to Roper Hospital’s ER.” Kitchens’ symptoms were so analogous to her Google findings, she wasn’t surprised when both the ER nurse and physician surmised that she might have gallstones and sent her to imaging. What did surprise her was the uneasy silence and concerned face of the physician when he returned to her room. “Your gallbladder is fine,” the doctor quietly stated. “But you have cancer. You have cancer in your uterus, your liver, your bones. …” “After he said the word cancer, everything went silent for me,” Kitchens recalled. “I could see his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. Finally, I asked him to again list areas of my cancer.” As the news was repeated, Kitchens lost her composure. “Screaming, I tried to rip the IV out of my arm. I was so angry and I was losing it,” she said. After a dose of Ativan, she doesn’t remember much. Just as she and Google were incorrect, so too were physicians. Kitchens’ curious case of cancer was a tangled mystery that required exploratory surgeries and several tests with a gynecological oncologist. She didn’t have uterine cancer after all. There was nothing there. “We’ve cleared you of uterine cancer, lung and breast cancers. We’ve biopsied your liver and sent it off for testing,” Kitchens’ physician informed her. “I’ll call you by Friday.” Friday became the following Tuesday, and all her physician could tell her was, “You do have cancer. We just can’t figure out its source. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.” A week later, they didn’t know anything other than that it wasn’t a gynecological cancer, so she was referred to a wellknown Charleston oncologist, Dr. Yanis Bellil.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjcyNTM1