Aid Kelli's Family: Honoring Her Legacy

Wife, mother, daughter, sister, family, friend, doctor- just a few of her many titles. Kelli was taken from us all too soon. Her way with words and the joy she brought to every room- will be with us forever.

Her greatest accomplishments (as she would always say) -Bill, Will, Sloane, and Beau need us right now. My hope is for them all to know that we love them and want to help in anyway we can- one way being with funds and any financial burdens. Please read Kelli’s words and let them become your words to live by- as so many of us have done and are doing. Bill and the kids are strong like Kelli and her legacy will live through them. As her friends, family, and loved ones we will wrap them with our love and support. I will be transferring the funds into Bill and Kelli’s Children’s Illinois Bright Start Education Accounts.

Taken from Kelli’s blog-Fall on your knees entry- December 25, 2024. As I reread her posts, I can’t help but share her story, through her own words.

Hello, gentle readers. It’s me, Kelli, back again. I’ve been hiding in plain sight this past year, surviving one hour at a time some days it seems. 2024 has been one for the books but the words have not been coming to me to share. Maybe it’s because there aren’t words for this kind of heartache and struggle, for this dog fight I’ve found myself in. At least none that do the reality of it all any sort of justice. But it’s Christmas and today I feel like unloading my conscience and providing everyone with a little holiday perspective gainer.

2024 started off like so many other years passed..resolutions, optimism, plans, pretending we can predict the future and what it will bring to us. This year felt like an important milestone. Three years after finishing a grueling chemotherapy and radiation regimen, I was feeling hopeful that 2024 would bring me to the three year cancer free mark, a big milestone in the triple negative breast cancer world. I almost made it. February would bring the first of the tumultuous, confusing heartache when we would learn we were unexpectedly pregnant and then promptly learn we miscarried. Shock, amazement, acceptance, excitement and then devastation that seemed out of proportion to the short duration of all of this. Losing that pregnancy felt very final, like I knew for sure my child bearing years were over. What I didn’t know is that the loss of this pregnancy was almost certainly God intervening, because in just a few short months, we would up the ante with the heartache. In April, I would find a lump and in May I would be diagnosed with recurrent breast cancer, just short of the three year mark I was frantically climbing toward. It gives me the shivers to think how close I came to repeating history.

The summer months of 2024 would turn out to be some of the hardest of my life. This cancer returned with a vengeance, one that seemed insistent on taking me down. Chemotherapy wrecked me inside and out with immunotherapy cleaning up what little joie de vivre chemotherapy left behind. I plowed through nearly 4 months of poisonous torture to find out that it only partially took care of the problem at hand and that this was most certainly not over like I recklessly told myself it would be. Despite mostly clearing up in my breast, this cancer continued its brutal march through my regional lymph nodes. 2024 turned out to be the year of the pivot and pivot we did at this point, with haste. Mastectomies and lymph node dissection found their way on to our calendar within the week of finishing chemotherapy and I underwent surgery October 8, a final goodbye to these murderous breasts.

The recovery from surgery was much less terrible than I was envisioning. I had prepared myself for agony, both physical and mental. In actuality, I was relieved to have the burden of my murderous breasts gone from my body and my mind. The physical recovery was swift and within 24 hours of arrival, I found myself dragging my mom and aunt up the country hills surrounding our cabin in the woods where I recovered, drains and all. I let them wait on me hand and foot while I focused on emotionally and mentally recovering from the onslaught of the previous months while my body healed from the physical assault. I will cherish for eternity the uninterrupted time I was able to spend with my mom and aunt while they so graciously cared for me. Spending that time in peace and quiet in the woods with some of the most important women in my life caring for me was about as healing as it gets and it did my emotional, mental, spiritual and physical health wonders.

The tentative plan following surgery had been to entertain proton radiation but as we all know by now, I like to keep it interesting and ever evolving. At the n-th hour, based on surgical pathology and imaging, we pivoted again and decided systemic therapy rather than local control with radiation was the better option. Because of the aggressive and relentless nature of my disease, we opted to pursue a clinical trial at this juncture. There’s a sweet spot for getting into clinical trials and having success…you have to be sick but not too sick. Fortunately, there is a relatively big trial specific to TNBC going on with local access at the University of Chicago that I was lucky to qualify for. An unbelievable amount of testing and imaging and biopsying and even pooping in a toilet hammock later and that’s what I’m doing these days…enduring this clinical trial while pouring myself into healing my body and mind from the inside out.

This year has been harrowing to say the least. I have confronted my mortality often. I have suffered immensely. I have undergone more procedures and sticks and imaging modalities and biopsies and trips to the clinic and ill side effects than you can imagine. I have broken everyone I love’s hearts repeatedly. I have accepted this hand even though it is wholly unacceptable. I have laid in bed with my best friends as this awful, horrible disease took one of our dearest friends from this Earth too soon and then crumbled in the hallway in front of the oncologist that we shared. Cancer has taken so many things from me…some days it feels like everything. Whole parts of my body, my dignity, my fertility, my picturesque motherhood, my hair, my eyebrows and lashes, my endurance, my tactile discrimination, my career, my pride, my friends, my sanity, my innocence, my life as I knew it.

And yet, here I am, still looking up, still holding space for optimism and hope and healing. It would be so easy to turn my back on my faith at this point. But I worked so hard on my spiritual self in the years between cancer 1 and 2. With the vengeful return and relentless progression of all of this, one might think I would lose my faith completely or feel abandoned with unanswered prayers. Quite the opposite actually. I recently spent a few days inpatient with norovirus, rhinovirus pneumonia and the worst mucositis I could ever imagine…a combination that very rapidly leads downhill and definitely did so for me over the course of the week prior. Sprinkle in a little bit of lazy bone marrow and I found myself admitted as sick as I’ve ever been, getting my first blood transfusion. The first night I was there, I was shipped up to my room from the specialty ER and found myself alone as Bill had gone home to be with the kids at bedtime. Maybe just a fever dream but I think more likely the hard spiritual work I’ve put in these past years put on display, I could feel myself tipping off the fear ledge. I had a high fever, felt terrible and alone and was increasingly concerned where this was all stemming from and ultimately leading as I could tell my vital signs were going the wrong direction. Everyone was running around drawing blood cultures and starting powerful antibiotics. Rather than let the cancer tornado sweep me up in to its grips, I simply called God close, asking Him to come near so I would not be alone and so that I could find comfort in this moment. I closed my own eyes to see Will’s deep green eyes, smell Beau’s hair fresh out of a bath, snuggle Sloane in her footie pajamas. When I woke up in a puddle of sweat hours later, my fever was broken and the sun was coming up, proof that life keeps marching on and the sun will rise and we are never alone if we can only remember to call God near when the walls close in.

2024 has been the hardest and cruelest year of my life. This intersection of cancer and motherhood and facing my mortality head on has been difficult to navigate, gut wrenching and exhilarating all at the same time. I’ve come to realize that this wasn’t put on my plate to teach me some grand lesson like I once thought. The lessons have come insidiously with living and with experience, and I’ve done and had a lot of both. Here’s what I know for sure. Every single second counts. The small, mundane moments are the moments you are waiting for. I often find myself laying in bed just listening to the noise of living with 3 small humans, memorizing the sounds of their laughter and squeals, the way their hair smells after a bath, the peaceful way they look when they’re deep asleep, the funny ways they pronounce words and talk to each other in their own language. Maybe most prudently, I understand on a deep level that who you choose as your partner in this life might be the single most important thing you ever decide. Bill is the unsung hero of this tale, consistently showing up and holding us all up and never complaining. I know this has been excruciating for him but he never stops enduring, never stops pushing us forward, carrying us when we need it. This disease has proven to be ruthless and unforgiving. But I am more ruthless. I will keep fouling off pitches as long as they keep throwing them in my direction and I can swing the bat. Despite finding my back against the wall over and over again, I still have an unwavering belief that I will prevail, that I am able to heal my body and mind, that mind over matter might be the single most important skill one can master. I still believe my body is strong and the greatest machine I’ll ever have the privilege of using, even though it’s betrayed me, even though it’s tired and worn. If nothing else, I believe my mind is a powerful and steadfast tool and my faith even more so. I know there is a plan for me and it will be revealed in due time. And in the mean time, I will continue to bet on myself and trust in my God and the grander plan. There is so much to wake up for, be gracious for, even though some days it would be easier to do just the opposite. To understand that is the ultimate life hack.

So on this Christmas Day, take a moment. Let the mess pile up. Forget about the to-do list. Wear your pajamas all day. Eat the cookies. Revel in the chaos. Or the quiet peace depending on what life stage you are in. Remember exactly what it is we are celebrating today. Most importantly of all, fall on your knees, as I have so many times in this wretchedly glorious time. Merry Christmas to you all. Bring on 2025. I’m ready…are you?