Happy 40th, Kim Stuart — At this milestone, health is the best gift of all

By Jacob Luecke

This story is featured in the Winter 2013 edition of myBoone Health magazine. Click here for a free subscription.

Kim Stuart has a birthday coming up and it’s a big one.

On Feb. 3 she turns 40.

It’s a milestone many of us grumble about as it approaches. But for Stuart, 40 has a different meaning.

“As a woman, you don’t want to be 40,” she said with a laugh. “But the fact that I was not supposed to live this long makes me feel very lucky.”

Kim was 16 when she was diagnosed with leukemia at Boone Hospital Center. Her caregivers thought she might have only days to live. But she pulled through.

A year later, the cancer came back. Her prognosis was even worse. Again, she persevered.

And on it went, a series of illnesses — one after the other — that would hospitalize Stuart for stretches of her teens and young-adulthood.

Now, approaching 40, she’s finally healthy. She’s not taking it for granted.

“I feel very lucky that I am able to live a normal life and take care of my kids and have even basic things like a house and a car,” she said.

So if she’s about to go over the hill, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Getting there was certainly an uphill climb.

First diagnosis

As hard as she tried, Kim just couldn’t keep up.

She was 16 and running laps with her Moberly High School softball team. A multi-sport athlete, Kim was usually among the fastest girls on the team. But now, she lagged behind.

“Come on, Perkins, pick it up!” she remembers her coach yelling, using her maiden name.

Something was wrong with her body. Every day she felt increasingly weak and lightheaded. She bruised easily.

Kim as a 16 year old.

Her parents took her to their family doctor in Moberly, who assured them Kim was simply feeling aftereffects from the strep throat she had earlier in the year.

In her heart, Kim feared it was something worse.

The problems peaked on Kim’s first day of school as a junior at Moberly High School. She felt bad that morning and threw up before school. But she went anyway.

When Kim got to school, she was so weak it was hard to even walk. She had to sit on the floor and rest on the way to class.

Her friends could tell something was wrong. “It’s just my strep,” she told them.

During class, her symptoms got worse. Rather than listening, she was fighting the urge to pass out.

She was excused to go to the principal’s office and asked to see her doctor. This time, she was sent to Boone Hospital for testing. She was admitted and stayed overnight.

The next day, she noticed her nurses were bringing equipment into her hospital room and seemed to be setting up for treatment.

“I was like, ‘This isn’t right. I’m going home today, I have a ball game,’” Kim said.

Later, her doctors came to share their devastating diagnosis: she had leukemia. She would need to start chemotherapy immediately.

Kim asked everyone to leave her room.

“I just started screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘No! Why? I’m not a bad person! Why are you doing this to me?” she said.

The worst part was there was no way out. She was stuck in the hospital, more than 40 miles from her friends and the rest of her life. She couldn’t leave.

“At that age you can usually finagle your way out of things, but there was nothing I could do,” she said.

She was placed in an isolation room and began chemotherapy. Her nurses weren’t certain if she would live through that first weekend. But she did.

The days of treatment turned into weeks and then months. While she was rarely able to leave her room, she accepted a constant stream of visitors and well-wishers.

They brought her stuffed animals and teen heartthrob posters for her room.

“My hospital room ended up looking like a teenager’s bedroom,” she said. “It didn’t look like any one else’s room in the hospital.”

Kim with brother Heath Perkins.

Her parents and brother spent countless hours with her at the hospital. Their love and dedication encouraged Kim to keep fighting.

But she was also often alone. During these times, Kim forged a strong bond with her nurses, who she said were like second mothers.

“They took me under their wings. They treated me like family,” she said. “If I felt scared about anything, I knew I could talk to my nurses and they would make me feel better.”

The caregivers also tried to bring moments of fun to Kim’s hospital routine. On Halloween, Kim remembers dressing up and going trick-or-treating down the hospital halls with another young patient, their IV poles beside them.

It took two rounds of chemo to get her cancer into remission. She returned to school. Halfway through her senior year, the cancer returned and she was hospitalized again.

Boone Hospital was beginning to feel like a second home.

Lingering problems

During her stays at Boone Hospital, Kim would sometimes walk to a window overlooking Columbia.

The view from up high made her feel like she was in a spaceship, watching remotely as people lived their lives below.

Sometimes, she would focus on a little white house with black shutters across the street. She would mentally take herself there, imagining what it must feel like to be inside that house. Remembering the warmth of home.

But even while far from her family and friends, Kim continued to remotely progress through high school.

When her cancer went into remission for a second time, Kim was able to leave the hospital to graduate from high school. But she was hospitalized again summer for a bone marrow transplant.

In the years that followed, she attended college at Culver Stockton on a full ride scholarship. She graduated Summa Cum Laude. She began a career, married her high school sweetheart and started a family.

But her good times were regularly punctured by reoccurring illness and hospitalization. There were still many days her health took her away from home.

Kim Stuart

She had a port-a-cath installed, had a liver biopsy, was hospitalized for pneumonia, underwent an appendix removal. She also sought treatment for allergy problems, bladder issues, hearing loss, migraines and other disorders.

While these ongoing problems seem unrelated to cancer, it’s likely her treatments as a teenager weakened her body, contributing to the lingering health issues.

“Kim is a remarkable young woman,” said Joe Muscato, MD, Kim’s longtime physician. “She came close to death on several occasions during her treatment, a frightening place for anyone — but especially for a teenager. I am extremely proud of how she has carried herself in her life.”

In 2011, Kim was hospitalized yet again. She’d been living with Hepatitis C for years. She likely contracted it through a blood transfusion as a teenager. Years ago, blood banks did not test for Hepatitis C.

She decided to undergo a new treatment that would hopefully cure the disease. But the medication had severe side effects — she could barely walk or see. She couldn’t drive or work.

She was hospitalized. Again away from her home and family. She had flashbacks to earlier in life.

She went back to her old window overlooking Columbia. But this time, when she looked out, the little white house with black shutters was gone. In its place stood a large medical office building.

The entire hospital had changed over the years.

The hospital’s expansion and renovation were progress. But for Kim it was different and more personal. The hospital was like a home to her. Watching it transform felt like going back to a childhood home to find that so much had changed.

But she found much comfort in one thing at that hadn’t changed at Boone Hospital — the people.

“I would not be here if it hadn’t been for the doctors and caregivers,” she said.

Some of her caregivers from her teenage years still work at Boone Hospital and nearby physician clinics. These people hold a special place in her heart.

And like every time before, the care team again saw her back to health.

Healthy at 40

Kim still spends her days fighting cancer. But now, she fights other people’s cancers.

Kim working as a registered medical technologist at Missouri Cancer Associates.

She serves as a registered medical technologist in the laboratory at Missouri Cancer Associates, the physician clinic affiliated with Boone Hospital. Some of the people who cared for her as a teen are now her coworkers.

With her personal experiences, Kim finds it easy to connect with her patients.

“When I go and do a biopsy in a room, I can actually say, ‘I know how you feel,’” she said. “It’s not just something that I’m saying. I’ve actually been there in that situation.”

As she approaches 40, she’s finally in a very good place. She is cured of cancer, Hepatitis C and many of her other ailments.  She is mother to four adopted children. She has a husband who stood by her side through sickness and health.

She’s surrounded by friends and community members who prayed for her during her rough years. She has a strong Christian faith that’s helped her turn difficult times into powerful life lessons.

She also still has Boone Hospital — which is directly across the street from her job. It’s a daily reminder of having another shot at a healthy life as she turns 40.

And health, it turns out, is the best birthday gift of all.

“I’m just happy to be here,” she said.