Education is her mission
When you learn life-changing information, the natural instinct is to share it. For Holley Kitchen, sharing information has turned into a life-affirming experience.
Three years ago, Kitchen, then 39, was breast-feeding her youngest child when she noticed a lump in her breast. She ignored it, thinking it must be a clogged duct. When she finally went in for a mammogram in July 2012, the news came quickly.
“They told me right on the spot it was cancer,” Kitchen said. “I went in for the biopsy and found out I had ERPR positive, HER2 negative, BRCA gene mutation negative Stage 3 breast cancer.”
Kitchen chose Dr. Beth Hellerstedt of Texas Oncology as her doctor. “She is the most amazing human being and the most amazing doctor,” Kitchen said.
After six months of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and 36 radiation treatments, Kitchen thought she was done with cancer. “I got clear margins in surgery, I had great results in radiation, and I had no boobs so I figured ‘no problem.’ “
When her skin healed from the first surgery, Kitchen had reconstructive surgery, which was very tough for her. In her blood work at that time, her doctor noticed that a blood test wasn’t quite right so they did a bone scan, and there was the cancer again. She was now Stage 4 -metastatic breast cancer.
“Here is my doctor telling me it was basically terminal disease,” Kitchen said. “I thought no boobs meant no cancer and that could not be further from the truth. I have made it my mission to make metastatic breast cancer a talked-about disease.”
She wasn’t sure at first how she would launch that mission. “I would talk to people and make Facebook posts about my situation and I was deep into prayer time when the Lord gave me this flashcard video in my mind,” Kitchen said. “In midMay this year, I couldn’t shake it so I knew I was getting a message. I was at the grocery store and had about 15 minutes before my family and I went out to dinner and thought ‘I’ll work on that video.’” A couple of weeks later, her video, went up on the Facebook page Holley Kitchen: And the Cancer Lifers. It has had 52 million views.
While she continues to spread the word about metastatic breast cancer, Kitchen will be on treatment for the rest of her life. Her current regimen is a chemotherapy infusion that is given once a week for three weeks in a row, then a week off. She has had a couple of issues where her health care team has had to change her treatment, but otherwise is living what she calls a pretty normal life. “Generally, I feel very well,” she said. “My doctor is very sensitive to quality of life. With metastatic treatment, you don’t always go in with the most aggressive treatment. What you are looking for is quality of life.”
Her message is not only educating people, but urging them to action. “When I read the individual messages from people who have seen the video, that is when I feel validated,” Kitchen said. “One recent message was from a woman who was a breast cancer survivor and went in to get a checkup and was diagnosed at metastatic. Because of the video, she knew what it meant. That’s why I did it, so people understand.”
Her video is offering education and support to many people around the globe, but for her own support, she credits her family, including her two boys, now 7 and 4, and her support group. “Most of my support has come from the Breast Cancer Resource Center, a most amazing organization,” she said. “They have so many groups! I belong to the L4 group, lifers who are under 40. They still keep me in the group even though I am now 42! I have girlfriends from there who are now my very best friends and I don’t think I can do what I am doing without them. They don’t sympathize, they empathize. My lifers mean everything to me.”
She also credits her deepened faith with giving her the attitude she needs to get through this. “Chemo is my prayer time, my quiet time,“Kitchen said. “Without my faith, my attitude would be different, and it gives me hope. I know I need to be here for my kids and that I won’t be taken a moment too soon. That has been life-altering for me. I have to be here longer for them. I have more lessons to teach them.”
One lesson that Kitchen has for all of us, cancer survivors or not: “Never lose faith. Never lose hope. Never let a diagnosis define who you are.”