With her husband and mother by her side, Kerry sat in an exam room at Community MD Anderson Cancer Center – Anderson to learn the results of her most recent mammogram. Rana Hawamdeh, MD,a medical oncologist, and her nurse navigator, Melissa Musselman, entered the room to share that Kerry had been diagnosed with an early form of breast cancer.
As the news was being shared, Melissa held Kerry’s hand.
“Finding out I had cancer was the worst thing to hear, and she held my hand like we were friends versus being an employee,” Kerry said.
Given an extensive family history of breast cancer, Kerry and her team decided she would have a bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. Surgery was scheduled for June 20, 2022, and Kerry spent the weeks leading up to it preparing and also working full-time as a certified nurse assistant at Miller’s Nursing Home in Middletown.
Twenty minutes after the administration of anesthesia for surgery, Kerry experienced an event of hypovolemic shock that could not be stabilized in surgery. Surgery was aborted and she was admitted at to the Intensive Care Unit at Community Hospital North, where she required continued intubation and pressors to be stabilized.
Her team of caregivers determined she had anaphylactic shock, a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, but the reason was not clear. Following a series of diagnostic tests, an allergist and her team of physicians provided Kerry with a second diagnosis of systemic mastocytosis. This is an incurable rare blood disorder that occurs when the body makes abnormal mast cells, which are white blood cells that are part of the immune system. In systemic mastocytosis, abnormal mast cells multiply, setting up a continuous allergic response that may affect a person’s skin and internal organs.
With her surgery delayed, Dr. Hawamdeh experimented with a variety of drug therapies, but Kerry could not tolerate them, so her physician referred her to Sumeet Bhatia, MD,a medical oncologist at Community Health Network MD Anderson Cancer Center, for a second opinion and review of this complicated case. It was recommended that she be seen by physicians at MD Anderson Cancer Center, a partner with Community Health Network, in Houston.
Kerry, unable to work at the job she loved for more than five years, immediately knew this was a trip she and her husband, Donnie, could not afford. But Melissa knew there was a way to help.
Thanks to the generosity of donors supporting Community Health Network Foundation’s efforts to provide financial aid to qualifying patients with cancer, Kerry was able to take this important medical trip.
“Melissa helped get our plane arranged and paid for, and our room at a hotel,” Kerry said. “Isn’t that amazing? Donnie’s niece also organized a GoFundMe and that also helped us.”
Kerry returned from Texas with a medication plan and eventually had a successful surgery to remove her right breast. Currently, she remains in Dr. Hawamdeh’s care, is in active treatment for both of herdiagnoses, and is on a wait list to join a new clinical trial at Community Health Network.
Kerry misses her job, so much so that she sometimes stops by the nursing home to visit with the residents she once cared for.
“I loved that job and my residents,” Kerry said. “I left on June 19, 2022, thinking I would have surgery and be back to work in four to six weeks. But we went from a two-income family to a single-income family, and we make too much for food stamps. We have a mortgage, a truck payment, and get no help. I have tried to get disability for two years and have an in-person court date coming up.”
With two daughters and Kerry’s mother living with them, the financial stress of these diagnoses impacted the family. Melissa helped Kerry qualify for gift cards and utility assistance made possible through Community Health Network Foundation’s Oncology Patient Assistance Fund. That fund is supported by philanthropy and connects cancer patients in need to food, medicine, transportation, and housing and utilities assistance.
“I live in Middletown and driving to Anderson every day got expensive,” Kerry said. “We used the cards for gas and food at Walmart. “I don’t know what we would do. It’s like something happens at a special time. When I get that gift card, it’s happened when we were really short.”
Kerry is grateful for her entire team of caregivers, but especially her nurse navigator, Melissa.
“Melissa has been my rock since day one and continues to be with me,” Kerry said. “She held my hand at diagnosis. I tell her all of the time that Community needs a hundred and one of her. We clicked the first day we met, she is super sweet and smart, and watches MyChart and looks after me. She even pops in on me if she knows I have an appointment with Dr. Hawamdeh, and that is two buildings away from where she works. Everyone is amazing - in Anderson, Indianapolis, and Houston. They really care about their patients.”
