As a registered dietitian and avid runner, Beth Kitchin has had a healthy routine her entire life.
She ate well, loved jogging, hiking and lifting weights, had run a few marathons and practiced yoga and tai chi. Kitchin had “absolutely” no health issues — until she started feeling a shooting pain in one of her legs in the fall of 2020.
“I was in very good health,” Kitchin, now 60 and living in Birmingham, Alabama, tells TODAY.com.
“I was a really stingy person for my insurance company.”
Yet the pain in her inner left thigh kept bothering her. It felt like she had a pulled muscle, perhaps from overexertion or a running injury, she wondered.
The physical medicine doctor she was referred to thought it was bursitis (inflammation due to overuse of a joint), but ordered an MRI to get a specific diagnosis.
” My worst nightmare “
Hours before the exam in February 2021, Kitchin — a retired assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — was feeling carefree, posing for photos demonstrating exercises for an upcoming health study.
But after the MRI, a doctor urgently wanted to speak to Kitchin on the phone. The scan revealed tumors in both of his legs that looked like metastatic bone cancer, he said. It felt like a death sentence.
“It was like my worst nightmare,” she recalls. “My boyfriend came over and we cried and talked about what we were going to do. We planned for me to die.”
But the real diagnosis was yet to be made. If it was metastatic bone cancer, where was the original cancer? Doctors couldn’t find it. All of Kitchin’s test results were normal, and she felt fine except for the stabbing pain in her leg.
Finally, a biopsy of the tumors on his thigh bone revealed the answer.
“They said you didn’t have metastatic bone cancer, you had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and it was treatable,” Kitchin recalls.
“Oddly enough, it was a huge relief to be told I had leukemia.”
What is acute lymphoblastic leukemia?
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is an aggressive blood cancer that affects a type of white blood cell, according to the National Cancer Institute.
It all starts with a change in a single bone marrow stem cell, which then multiplies into billions of mutated cells, leading to a shortage of normal blood cells, notes the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
There is no clear cause or way to prevent the disease, the organization says.
This blood cancer can rarely cause bone damage, leading to bone or joint pain. Kitchin didn’t have any of the more common warning signs, such as fatigue, shortness of breath and pale skin.
The disease is treatable, but the treatment would be brutal.
Kitchin first had to undergo chemotherapy in a hospital to destroy as many cancer cells as possible. By the time Kitchin entered the hospital in April 2021, she was in “absolutely excruciating pain” from the bone tumors.
“Red Devil” Chemotherapy
One of the chemotherapy drugs she received during her two-and-a-half-week stay was nicknamed the “Red Devil” because it is crimson in color and so toxic that nurses had to cover up when injecting it into her body.
After her hospital stay, Kitchin underwent three more inpatient chemotherapy sessions, each lasting about five days. She ended up watching the entire series “The Golden Girls” and became a fan of HGTV during her stays.
The goal of the chemotherapy was to keep her in remission until she could find a stem cell donor and undergo a stem cell transplant, which would give her new, healthy blood-forming cells. A matching donor was found through a donor registry.
The stem cell transplant took place on August 31, 2021.
“It was like tomato sauce in a bag,” Kitchin recalls of the donated stem cells. “I already had a catheter and all I had to do was lie down and they would do the transfusion. (…) It was very disappointing.”
Rocky regains his health
While Kitchin’s health appeared to be improving, she suffered a setback several months after her transplant.
The donor’s stem cells began attacking his healthy cells, a complication known as graft-versus-host disease, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
She suffered from severe body swelling, a skin rash, liver problems, mouth ulcers and other symptoms. She was weak, stiff and could not walk.
“My body horrified me,” Kitchin says. “I looked at myself and saw a stranger looking at me. It was horrifying to me. I had never felt bad about my body before.”
Medication for each symptom helped control the ordeal. A physiotherapist got her walking again. She joined a gym in January 2023 and was able to lift weights and walk on the treadmill again.
Today, she spends two hours a day exercising: she takes walks outdoors, tries running and does stretching.
She feels fine, but she still suffers from dizziness and neuropathy in her feet from chemotherapy. Kitchin can live a normal life, but her nurse practitioner has told her to expect some health issues.
The dietitian had never taken medication before her diagnosis, but now she has to make do with a long list of medications. After seeing how expensive medications are, she became an advocate for affordable medications.
The randomness of it all still troubles her. People think that healthy living means they won’t get sick, but that’s not the case, she notes.
“I was angry. I felt like my body had betrayed me in some way. I felt like the universe was laughing at me,” Kitchin says.
“I have a new awareness of things I never thought I would have to be aware of. (…) It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be tired. But you can do it.”