Living Whole-heartedly After Colorectal Cancer Kate, a colorectal cancer survivor

Kate has lived all over the world, from France and Spain to Senegal and Thailand. Over the last 20 years, she’s worked on programs to improve the lives of people in multiple countries in Africa. She has spent most of the last decade fundraising to eradicate Guinea worm disease. Kate is fluent in French, proficient in Spanish and loves traveling internationally for work and pleasure.

For all her accomplishments, there’s one thing Kate didn’t do much of in her 20s and 30s: worry about her health. She enjoyed being active, running half-marathons and doing triathlons with friends.

So, when Kate, who works at The Carter Center in Atlanta, began having painful bowel movements after a work trip overseas in late 2015, she was mortified. “I thought—worst case scenario—I might have hemorrhoids,” Kate says.

Extensive testing at Emory Healthcare revealed that the situation was much more serious. Kate, just 37 years old, had late-stage colorectal cancer.

The treatment plan was intense. Kate would need chemotherapy and radiation therapy, then surgery to remove her sigmoid colon and everything below it. The surgery would involve creating a permanent colostomy. This meant Kate’s large intestine would exit her body through an opening in her abdomen. A bag outside of her body would collect waste. She would no longer have “normal” bowel movements.

“The diagnosis and treatment plan were super shocking for me,” Kate says. “For the next year, I just put one foot in front of the other as I went through each phase of treatment. I was in ‘get-through-it’ mode. Thanks to my incredibly supportive boss and colleagues at The Carter Center, I kept working, which gave me a sense of normalcy. But I felt like my life as I knew it had crumbled around me.”

In February 2017, after a year of treatment and surgery, Kate’s imaging scans showed no evidence of colorectal cancer. She learned to irrigate (flush out) her colostomy, a regular process that provides a degree of continence. Kate started to adjust to her “new normal” of life after cancer. But the following year, the cancer returned.

“I was gutted,” Kate recalls. “After all I had been through, it was nothing short of devastating to learn that the cancer was back. I remember crying uncontrollably to my mom saying, ‘I don’t want to do this again. I can’t do this again.’ I started to grapple with my mortality.”

Kate’s oncologist at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University told Kate that the only treatment option was chemotherapy. “Going through chemo a second time, now with a colostomy, was the hardest and lowest point of my life so far,” she says. “There was no guarantee the cancer would ever be cured definitively. And I didn’t think I had the strength to face a life of on-and-off chemo.”

As she concluded her 2018 chemotherapy treatments, one bright spot for Kate was that Winship started a support group for young adults with cancer. “We met regularly in person and really got to know each other,” she says. “When the pandemic forced us to start meeting online, the group grew, and it was encouraging to see even more people participate. The group has been an important source of community and support and helped me not feel alone while living with a life-altering cancer diagnosis.”

After chemotherapy in 2018, Kate’s scans were clear for three years. But in 2021, doctors found more cancer, this time in several lymph nodes. Surgery to remove the lymph nodes was successful. Since then, her scans have been clear.

In 2022, Kate transitioned to the care of Olatunji B. Alese, MD, and team. “I told Dr. Alese I hoped that I’d be ‘an uninteresting patient from here on out.’ And thankfully, my scans have been clear for three and a half years at this point. That’s the longest I’ve been cancer-free since my first diagnosis. It feels amazing.”

Kate credits her care team with helping her navigate her challenging treatment course. “Before all this, I had no idea what people with cancer had to go through,” she says. “Everyone at Winship, from the care team to the receptionists and valets, has been incredibly caring and supportive.”

Kate likes to say that cancer has affected her but not defined her. In many ways, she’s back to her “old life.” She continues to work at the Carter Center and has traveled to eight countries since her colostomy surgery in 2017, including Japan, Switzerland, Belize and Guatemala.

In 2015, Katie was in the room with her colleagues when former President Carter, who was also treated at Winship, announced his brain tumor diagnosis. Little did she know she would be diagnosed with cancer less than a year later. President Carter met with her briefly after her diagnosis and after her recurrence to offer encouragement, prayers and kindness that buoyed her during a very low time.

With all she has endured, she sometimes feels older—and wiser—than her years.

“I’m grateful to be alive, but I recognize that no one is guaranteed tomorrow. I strive to live whole-heartedly because any day can be our last,” she says.

For Kate, it’s about more than travel and bucket lists. She makes a conscious effort to be present with her family and friends, especially her nine-year-old nephew, who was born just before her diagnosis. Her nephew and five-year-old niece are beloved sources of joy for Kate. Gratitude has also become an essential part of her day.

“Early on, a friend sent me a card that said, ‘Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day,’ and I have found that to be true,” Kate says. “Every day, I reflect on something good that happened and write it down in my journal. It grounds me and keeps me on a more even keel, no matter what the future holds.”