Jim Stingl
Fighting cancer, Kelly Pflanzer kept everyone laughing to the end.
As cancer patients go, Kelly Pflanzer was hilarious.
You probably thought I was going to say tough or determined or inspirational.
Kelly was all that, too, but mostly she cracked wise and kept herself, her doctors, her family and friends laughing when crying made more sense.
In her words, “If we ain’t got a sense of humor, then we really ain’t got nothin’.”
This was a woman who gave Marcelo Pasquini, her oncologist at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, a framed copy of a vulgar word she created from a very adult coloring book.
In his line of work, Pasquini treats his share of pessimistic people. Kelly’s constant joking was refreshing.
“That kept her really sane throughout this. Because if you think about it, all the things she went through, and all the tough hospitalizations and the complications and the pain, this will get anybody crazy and just say I can’t deal with this anymore. I never heard this from Kelly,” the doctor says in one of many videos capturing her upbeat spirit.
There’s one showing Kelly’s husband, Tom, applying Tinkerbell temporary tattoos to what she calls her Kardashian butt to play a joke on the medical professionals who soon would be administering medication into that part of her body.
In another, plus-sized Kelly provocatively runs her hands over her hips and says, “They had to do a body X-ray. It took 16 X-rays to get this whole body on film.”
And her comedic timing is perfect when she publicly thanks everyone who donated money and renovation work to allow her easier access to her home, “and I didn’t even have to sleep with them.”
Her deadpan delivery then breaks and the laughter rises from deep inside and lights up her face. She self-consciously covers her mouth with her hand because her brittle teeth had been removed and she disliked the dentures she got to replace them.
Here’s the best way to describe how strong and healthy this woman used to be. For 22 years running, she won the beer keg and fry pan tossing contests at the summer festival in Okauchee. “Nobody would sign up anymore if they saw my name,” she said.
She turns serious in the video when she remembers those younger days. “This is why this whole situation with brittle bones and stuff just pisses me off because I was never this weak or
“If we ain’t got a sense of humor, then we really ain’t got nothin’.” Kelly Pflanzer Cancer patient
helpless.”
Everything changed for Kelly in September 2012.
Medical tests to learn why she had pain in her abdomen found not one but two distinct types of cancer — multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that weakens bones, and neuroendocrine cancer in her liver and pancreas, the kind Steve Jobs had.
Three stem cell transplants showed signs of working, but the cancer always came back.
“I am convinced that her attitude and sense of humor kept her going as long as she did,” said Peggy Kleespies, Kelly’s close friend since first grade in Okauchee.
“If Kelly could make you uncomfortable with her humor, that was the best. She could talk like a sailor if she wanted to. She loved naughty humor. Austin Powers movies are some of her favorites. She also had a sweet sensitive side,” Peggy said.
Kelly and Tom married in 1990 and bought a home at 32nd and Michigan in Milwaukee. Their two sons are Jonathon, 26, and Trevor, 24. Kelly worked in retail for years and also at her father’s tax office.
Even in hospice the final week of her life, Kelly was joking around. When her brother went to fetch a cool cloth for her forehead, she yelled after him, “You know you’re not getting any inheritance, right?”
She heard talk at her bedside that Tom was having family and friends at their house for dinner on Saturday, May 5, and she chose that rare moment of solitude to quietly slip away. The hospice called Tom during the gathering to say she had died. She was 54.
Kelly had one more bit of posthumous humor to offer. She specified that she wanted her cremated remains to go in a jar decorated with the seductive green M&M’s mascot.
On the jar it says, “You wanna piece of me?”