Beth Kitchen, a registered dietitian and avid runner, has developed healthy habits her whole life.
She ate well, enjoyed jogging, hiking and weight training, ran several marathons, and practiced yoga and tai chi. Kitchen had “absolutely” no health issues until the fall of 2020, when she began feeling a nagging pain in one of her feet.
“I was in extremely good health,” Kitchen, now 60, of Birmingham, Alabama, told TODAY.com.
“I was a real stingy guy for the insurance companies.”
But she continued to be plagued by a pain on the inside of her left thigh that felt like muscle soreness from overexertion or a running injury.
The physiotherapist she was referred to was Bursitis — inflammation from overuse of the joint — but he ordered an MRI to get a proper diagnosis.
“My worst nightmare.”
Just hours before her February 2021 scan, Kitchen, a former assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was in a carefree mood, posing for a photo demonstrating an exercise for an upcoming health study.
But after the MRI, the doctor asked to speak to Kitchen urgently on the phone. The scan revealed tumors in both Kitchen’s legs that looked like metastatic bone cancer. It felt like a death sentence.
“It was like my worst nightmare,” she recalled. “My boyfriend came in and we just cried and said, ‘What are we going to do now?’ We were planning for me to die.”
But the real diagnosis was still missing: If it was metastatic bone cancer, where was the original cancer? Doctors couldn’t find it. All of Kitchen’s tests were normal, and she felt fine, except for the nagging pain in her leg.
Finally, a biopsy of the tumor in her femur revealed the answer.
“The doctors said it wasn’t metastatic bone cancer, it was acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and it was treatable,” Kitchen recalled.
“So, weirdly enough, it was such a relief for someone to tell me I had leukemia.”
What is acute lymphoblastic leukemia?
Acute lymphocytic leukemia is an aggressive blood cancer that affects a type of white blood cell. National Cancer Institute.
It begins with a change in a single stem cell in the bone marrow, which multiplies into billions of mutant cells, causing a shortage of normal blood cells. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Note.
The disease has no clear cause and no way to prevent it, the group said.
This blood cancer is Bone lesions In rare cases, symptoms can include bone and joint pain. Kitchen didn’t exhibit any of the more common warning signs, such as fatigue, shortness of breath or pale skin.
The disease is treatable, but the treatment will be brutal.
Kitchen first had to be hospitalised to undergo chemotherapy to destroy as many cancer cells as possible, and by the time she was admitted to hospital in April 2021 she was suffering from “extremely excruciating pain” from the bone tumour.
“Red Devil” chemotherapy
One of the chemotherapy drugs she received during her two-and-a-half week hospital stay wasRed DevilBecause it was bright red and so poisonous that the nurses had to cover her up when they injected it into her body.
After being hospitalized, Kitchen underwent three more inpatient chemotherapy treatments, each lasting about five days. During her stay, Kitchen watched the entire series of “The Golden Girls” and became a fan of HGTV.
The goal of chemotherapy was to keep her in remission until she could find a cure. Stem Cell Donors He was then scheduled for a stem cell transplant to give him new, healthy blood-forming cells, and a match was found through a donor registry.
The stem cell transplant took place on August 31, 2021.
“It looked like tomato sauce in a bag,” Kitchen recalled of seeing her donated stem cells, “and they already had a port in there, so I just lay there and they were giving me the transfusion… It was pretty surprising.”
Rocky regains his health
Kitchen’s health appeared to be improving, but a few months after the transplant, she experienced a relapse.
The donor’s stem cells began attacking her healthy cells, which Graft-versus-host diseaseAccording to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
She suffered severe swelling of her body, skin rashes, liver problems and mouth ulcers, and she became weak, stiff and unable to walk.
“I felt horrified by my body,” Kitchen said. “I looked at myself and saw a stranger looking back at me. It was terrifying to me. I’d never felt bad about my body before.”
Medications for each condition kept her pain under control. A physical therapist helped her walk again. She returned to the gym in January 2023, lifting weights and walking on the treadmill again.
She now exercises two hours a day, taking walks outside, running, walking and stretching.
Although she feels well, she still suffers from dizziness and neuropathy in her legs from the chemotherapy, and while Kitchen expects to live a normal lifespan, her nurses have told her to expect some health problems.
The nutritionist had never taken medication before her diagnosis, but now she has to rely on a lot of medicines, and after learning about their high prices, she became an activist for affordable medicines.
These random occurrences still upset her: “People think that if you live a clean life you won’t get sick, but that’s not true,” she points out.
“I was angry. I felt like my body had betrayed me in some way. I felt like the universe was taunting me,” Kitchen said.
“I’ve become more wary of things I never thought I’d have to be wary of before. … It’s normal to feel angry. It’s normal to feel tired. But you’ll get through it.”
