DESCRIPTION
The unstoppable Deb Krier survived Stage IV HER2+ breast cancer, basal cell carcinoma and papillary thyroid cancer, enduring 33 surgeries.
In 2015, Deb Krier of Mapleton, Georgia, went in for a routine mammogram. She had no idea that would be start of a lengthy cancer journey. After the procedure, she was asked to return to the clinic. Although the mammogram did not reveal a lump or a bump, it did reveal tiny flecks known called microcalcifications. Next up for Deb, were two needle biopsies, known as stereotactic biopsies. Both came back negative. Even though Deb was diagnosed Stage Zero, doctors called for an MRI. Viewing the results, the surgeon suggested some lymph nodes be removed.
The surgeon was stunned when of twelve removed lymph nodes eight were positive, and just like that, Deb went from Stage Zero to Stage Three. This necessitated a visit to an oncologist.
Deb Krier and her oncologist decided to chemotherapy, then surgery, then radiation treatment. They also agreed on a massive chemotherapy regimen. Deb cannot name any of them, but there were no less than eight drugs in her chemo cocktail. She had a port put in her shoulder, and her initial chemotherapy session lasted eight hours.
There were complications from Deb’s chemotherapy regimen. It caused damage to her colon, resulting in septic shock. This required emergency, life-saving surgery on her colon. She also suffered hair loss, brain fog and fatigue.
Next up was the surgery, and Deb opted for a double mastectomy without reconstruction decision she felt was the right decision at the time, and still does. She said she no longer wanted to worry about her breasts and wanted them both gone even the cancer existed in only one. She also didn’t like the idea of “foreign objects’ being put into her body.
Meanwhile, when Deb experienced pain in her ribcage and the test came back as “inconclusive,” doctors changed her diagnosis to Stage IV, so that they give it the highest level of treatment.
From all her surgeries, Deb could look at herself and see lots of scars, but when she looks at them, she realizes without the scars, she wouldn’t be alive.
However, cancer was not done with Deb. In 2021, while visiting her primary care physician, she pointed out a sore on her arm. Deb was referred to a dermatologist, who conducted a biopsy and said showed basal cell carcinoma. Deb said it was a very small patch, easily burned off. She still sees a dermatologist once every six months.
Then in 2023, Deb Krier was diagnosed with a third cancer, papillary thyroid cancer. She told her doctor she would have a spasm. The doctor ran a CT scan, and it showed lesions on her thyroid. After more tests and shots and biopsies, she learned she had papillary thyroid cancer. There were two tumors, but they were caught so early that the removal of Deb’s thyroid was relatively easy.
By way of advice, Deb Krier reminds anyone diagnosed with cancer that they are not alone. She also advises one diagnosed with cancer to do plenty of research and to always be their own advocate.
Additional Resources:
Deb’s website: www.tryingnottodie.LIVE
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: This is the Cancer Interviews podcast, and I’m your host, Bruce Morton. The score is Deb Krier three, Cancer nothing. Our guest on this episode, Deb Krier of Mapleton, Georgia has survived breast cancer, skin cancer and thyroid cancer, and she has a message for cancer, namely that she is ready to help patients and caregivers. Now it’s time to hear her story, and Deb, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Deb Krier: Thank you so much, Bruce. It is an honor to be on your program.
BM: Deb, you have a life away from cancer, so if you would, tell us a bit about where you are from, what you do for work and what you do for fun.
DK: Great! I am from Colorado, but I am now living outside Atlanta, Georgia, but I am a proud Colorado person. I have my own marketing and PR firm, Wise Women Communications. Wonderful husband, no kids, but four dogs and two cats.
BM: And for fun?
DK: It is kind of a variety of things. One thing we like to do is take drives. It is very cool around the Atlanta area and the South in general. There is so much history here that we can see. There are so many beautiful gardens so I can look at them and not try to care for them myself. I also sit on several boards and enjoy sitting on those, also.
BM: Your journey began with a procedure all women have, or should have, a routine mammogram. Tell us how that evolved.
DK: It was back in 2015. As you said, I went in for my normal mammogram. Did it. Wasn’t even home yet, and they called and said I needed to come back. I used to work for the American Cancer Society and for an oncologist, so I knew that call was probably not a good thing. I didn’t have a lump, I didn’t have a bump, I didn’t have anything that you would normally associate with any type of cancer. The computer saw them, teeny, tiny little flecks. Went to Dr. Google and learned that most women of a certain age have these. It happens in our bodies as our hormones change. In rare cases, they turn into pre-cancerous kinds of things. What happens is, they gather, then they start really big problems.
BM: Then you needed to experience an unpleasant-but-necessary needle biopsy. What happened with that and after that?
DK: I had two needle biopsies, and in case, they are called a stereotactic biopsy. The table you are on is elevated and it gives the doctors a good view of what they are doing. Both of those came back negative, but we were not aiming for teeny, little specks. There was no rush. The diagnosis was Stage Zero, but we decided to do an MRI. Even then, we weren’t concerned because I had had a poison ivy reaction on my left arm. Next, the surgeon said some lymph nodes should be removed. Nobody was as surprised as she was when he learned eight of twelve lymph nodes were positive, and just like that, I went from Stage Zero to Stage III. I didn’t have an oncologist on that point, but then, things got very concerning.
BM: And that led to your diagnosis. Deb, everybody is different, their persona is different, the type of cancer is different, the severity of their diagnosis is different. Given the variables in your personal cancer equation, how did you handle this awful news?
DK: I was annoyed. I was pissed. Of course, I was upset. It was one of the few times I actually cried during this entire journey. I shed a few tears, but I was not one who was going to feel sorry for myself. I would much rather get it done and take care of it. The initial diagnosis was Stage III, and at that point I had to go to an oncologist.
BM: We’re confident you’ll be able to learn some tips and tools to help you through your personal cancer journey, but first we’d like to invite you to give us a ‘like,’ leave a comment or review below and share this story with your friends. Kindly click on the Subscribe button below and click on the bell icon, so you’ll be notified the next time we post an interview. And if you or a loved one are facing a cancer diagnosis, please click on the link in the Description and Show Notes below to check out our free guide, “The Top Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I First Got Cancer.”
Deb, for you, when you first got cancer, did you have treatment options in terms of what you wanted to do, going forward, and if you had options, not everyone does, what did you decide to do?
DK: There are options and I tell people what you just mentioned. Even if you have the exact same diagnosis, your body, your treatment, everything is different. There are so many options, and it does get confusing. I urge people to explore those options. Make sure you know what you are getting into. Now, I did choose to go the traditional route. We did decide to do chemo prior to surgery because those tiny specks were floating throughout my body. We agreed to do a massive, massive amount of chemo. The plan was that I would have chemo, then surgery, then radiation treatment, a traditional approach; but I also talked to nutritionists, I talked to all sorts of different people to have a combination of things that was going to work best for me.
BM: Regarding your chemo regimen, you had a huge, perhaps record-setting cocktail of eight drugs. I wouldn’t expect you to name all eight of them, but if there were one or two of them you remember, what are their names?
DK: You know, I honestly don’t remember. Because there were eight, the course of treatment that very first time took over eight hours. I discovered that Jimmy John’s delivers to oncology rooms, so I had my lunch delivered. The first treatment goes very slowly. I had a port put into my shoulder because we knew this was going to be a long-term type of thing and my veins were just not going to hold out. They put the ports in slowly, one at a time, to make sure the body doesn’t react to them. You also get drugs that help with nausea, you get Benadryl. Yeah, I had eight different drugs over the course of eight hours.
BM: And as is the case with not everybody, but almost everybody on a chemo regimen, there are complications. For you, how did those complications manifest themselves?
DK: Mine were massive. I always tell people anything that happens, let your doctor know because they might be able to make adjustments. Don’t assume you’re going to have nausea, don’t assume you are going to have pain. Like you said, everybody is different. I was fine for about three days. Halloween came and I put candy out for trick-or-treaters, all sorts of good things. Then I started feeling kind of puny, but I remember that inside me I had two doses of chemo. Then I sent my husband to work. I thought I was fine; the neighbors all knew what was going on. Then I started getting worse, started running a fever. That is a bit more unusual, so we called in to the oncologist. We got the standard response telling me to take Tylenol, and to let them know if my temperature starting going over 101.1 degrees. So, Tylenol helped a bit, but then the pain hit, and I had a pain in my lower left side that was unbelievable. I knew that was not normal. We called the ambulance and the fire department because the fire department had to get me down the stairs. They took me to the hospital. I was my normal chatty self until about halfway to the hospital when I passed out. What had happened was a complication, which I later found out happened to less than one percent of breast cancer patients. At that point, I was the only person that ever survived this complication. It caused damage to my colon, and I ended up in septic shock, which is often fatal. I remember hearing the doctors arguing over how soon I would die, but I had emergency surgery on my colon, which obviously saved my life, then just went from there. The septic shock caused more complications that were long term than anything else. I ended up spending seven weeks in the hospital, lots more surgeries going on while I was there, in and out of ICU, and it was major challenge just to keep alive.
BM: I don’t mean to make light of this, but let’s talk about some of the more garden-variety problems caused by chemotherapy. There is fatigue, there is hair loss and food tastes terrible. How were you affected by those things?
DK: I was not able to eat for a time, so I don’t know a lot about the taste of food during chemo. I did lose my hair. I was scheduled for ten full treatments and only had the one, so who knows what would have happened if I had had them all. You end up with such weird things from chemo. The brain fog was one that was there, but I also had a lot of anesthesia. One of the surgeries that I had was about seven and a half hours, and I had lots of procedures, so my poor, little brain just got pretty scrambled.
BM: The chemo was supposed to be pre-surgery. Let’s get to the surgery. You opted for a double mastectomy, with no reconstruction. Looking back, with the options you had, would you now say that this was a difficult call, that it was the right call?
DK: For me, it was not a difficult decision and it was the right decision. It is something every woman diagnosed with breast cancer has to give strong consideration. I think a lot of my decision was based on the fact that I am old, I don’t care about those breasts, I wanted them gone, I didn’t want to have to worry about them, so that’s why I decided to do the double. I didn’t want to be lopsided, but I also didn’t want to worry about the remaining breast. I did learn that when you have a breast removed that is not affected by cancer, it is considered prophylactic surgery, so not medically necessary, so that removal, you have to pay for it. Your insurance doesn’t cover it. It’s like plastic surgery. I should add every woman I have talked to who had reconstructive surgery has had issues. Many, many women do not have any problems, but that is something to explore if that is what you are thinking about. Just make sure it is what you want to do, because you are putting foreign objects back into your body.
BM: As we look at your breast cancer journey through the lens of the here and now, going forward, do you feel whole, or as close to feeling whole as possible?
DK: I do. In amongst all of this, they changed my diagnosis to Stage IV because I had pain in my ribcage, they tested it, and the test came back as “inconclusive,” so they decided to call it Stage IV. That way they can give it the most treatment they could. So, they did that. When I look at my scars, I look at them and realize if I did not have those scars, I would not be alive. The bigger scars are tied to the abdominal surgery I had because of the septic shock. This is the way I am now, and it doesn’t bother me that much.
BM: Now, let’s move forward with your cancer journeys, plural. You were diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma. What led to that?
DK: It was an easy one. I was in for my annual visit with my primary care doctor. At the end of the visit, she asked if there was anything else she could check and I said, “I’ve got this sore on my arm that won’t heal.” Next thing I know I am being seen by a dermatologist, who took one look at it, made some faces, did a biopsy and said it was basal cell carcinoma. That type of cancer is very easy to treat. It was such a small, little patch, he just basically burned it off and I didn’t even have a stitch. I am okay, but every six months I have to go to a dermatologist just to make sure everything is good.
BM: Then in 2023, you were diagnosed with a third cancer, papillary thyroid cancer. What led to that diagnosis?
DK: I am still in treatment. I still have a port in my shoulder and I go in every 21 days and have treatment. So, I was talking to my doctor and said when I sit at my computer too long, I get a spasm in my left arm. I am assuming it is scar tissue because when I move around, it goes away. So, I was wondering if I could get physical therapy, and my doctor said no tests had been run on me in quite a while because they haven’t appeared to be necessary. So, she put me on a CT scan, and it showed lesions on my thyroid. That was quite shocking. We had no idea that there was anything going on there because there were no symptoms. It was something that caught so early that it had not caused any problems at all. More tests, more needles, more shots, more biopsies, more scans, and eventually they said it is indeed papillary thyroid cancer. The treatment for that was their totally removing my thyroid. There actually were two tumors, but they were caught so early that I didn’t have to have any followup treatment, which is good because thyroid treatment is pretty nasty. I did ask my endochronologist if this was a spread of my breast cancer. He said no, that thyroid cancer is always a primary cancer. That said, I did have a family history of thyroid cancer, and I did have radiation treatment for breast cancer.
BM: So, Deb, you have survived breast cancer, skin cancer and thyroid cancer. You’re still with us, you’re still going strong. If you take kind of a 30,000-foot view of all that has happened, all that you have gone through, how exciting is it to know that you have gone through these formidable challenges and you have survived them all?
DK: We do what we have to do. The thing about having Stage IV cancer is that it not considered curable, but I have passed the five-year mark, which is a big milestone. So, you just keep going. I am stubborn and I do use my sense of humor in a lot of ways to get through all of this, but than anything, I just keep thinking, “I’m not done. I still have things I need to be doing.”
BM: That makes a nice segue into the last areas we want to cover with you, Deb. We want to hear more about what you are doing to help cancer patients and caregivers.
DK: We started an initiative called Trying Not To Die. It is about helping someone with their cancer journey. I like to say we are warriors. You call me a patient and I make a face, but we are warriors. We are in the fight for our life. It’s all about how we are in this battle, but we are not here alone, and so how do we build our tribe around us. Trying Not To Die is a way to get resources. Our whole premise is, whether it is cancer, whether it is some other serious illness, we get so caught up in trying to not die, that we forget we have to live. We remind someone that they have to take charge. If you are the cancer warrior, you need to take charge. You need to advocate 100 percent for your health. I love your question earlier about the various options. You have to research those. Don’t do something because somebody says you should be doing it. It is your body, and it is your choice. Make sure those around you are the right people and that they are your advocates. There were several times during my journey that my husband was in charge because I was not able to be. We make sure to tell people to get their power of attorney in order and their will. Make sure those things are done and in order. And support each other, we need to support each other on our journeys.
BM: Excellent. Deb Krier, Mapleton, Georgia, thanks so much for sharing your story and thanks for within your story for including some sage advice. Before I go, what is the address for your website?
DK: It’s www.tryingnottodie.LIVE
BM: Deb, thanks so much for being on Cancer Interviews. We really appreciate your story.
DK: Thank you so much and I am so honored to have been a guest.
BM: And that’ll wrap up this edition of the Cancer Interviews podcast, and we will conclude as we always by reminding that if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are people out there like Deb Krier who have information and inspiration that can be of help. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
Additional Resources:
Deb’s website: www.tryingnottodie.LIVE
Deb’s Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1465660477225232
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Deb Krier – Survivor of Breast, Skin and Thyroid Cancers – Mapleton, Georgia, USA
What Deb Krier thought was a routine mammogram turned into a Stage Zero diagnosis of breast cancer. Stage Zero became Stage III, which was upgraded to Stage IV HER 2+ invasive breast cancer. Deb opted for a double mastectomy with no reconstruction. She was subsequently diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, then papillary thyroid cancer. Through 33 surgeries, she has survived all three cancers.
Additional Resources:
Deb’s website: www.tryingnottodie.LIVE
Time Stamps:
02:27 A mammogram turned up microcalcifications.
03:24 Deb underwent a stereotactic biopsy, then an MRI, and lymph nodes on her left side lit up.
04:28 Twelve lymph nodes were removed, eight were positive and Deb was diagnosed Stage III.
07:20 It was decided chemotherapy would precede surgery.
09:37 Deb experienced numerous chemo-related complications.
15:15 Explains opting for a double mastectomy without reconstruction.
17:05 Says her diagnosed was changed to Stage IV.
18:32 Deb recalls her subsequent diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma.
20:05 In 2023, she was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer.
22:57 Says she is happy to have survived three cancers.
KEYWORDS (tags):
microcalcifications
needle biopsy
septic shock
stereotactic biopsy
deb krier
double mastectomy
basal cell carcinoma
bruce morton
papillary thyroid cancer
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