4 | THINK PINK Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Facing Cancer
OCTOBER 14, 2020
Diagnosed at a young age with an aggressive cancer, Klaerner’s fight involved family, friends By Yvonne Hartmann
Standard-Radio Post managing editor
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n arrow, waves and the word “Believe” are tattooed on the inside of Christa Klaerner’s right arm as a daily reminder of her cancer journey. It’s also a reminder that she is a survivor. Designed by Christa herself, the arrow, she explained, “is God shooting me through my journey in life. The waves represent those initial first days and weeks.” A favorite fight song of Christa’s by Rachel Platten talks about being a small boat in an ocean. “The waves are just constantly hitting you and you just don’t know which way to go or what to do,” she said. “But I believed that God would get me through it. He did, and he is shooting me off to my next journey.” Husband Kyle has the same tattoo on his upper arm with the arrow pointing toward his heart. Start of the journey Christa’s journey began in June 2015 when she had her yearly well-woman check with Dr. Melissa George. She remembers visiting with Dr. George about how her grandmother had breast cancer and was wondering when she should start thinking about having a baseline mammogram. Christa was only 33 and the age recommendations for healthy young women is usually 40. As it turned out during the breast exam, the doctor found a lump, which they followed with a sonogram. George opted for the sonogram because young women typically have dense breasts, and a sonogram is better able to detect something at that age. But the sonogram showed nothing. She began having some pain in her right breast, and they did another sonogram in July and a third in August. Still nothing. “Sometimes they say cancer is painless, but mine was very painful,” Christa said. Thinking she might have a clogged milk duct, she was put on antibiotics and steroids.
December will mark five years Christa Klaerner is cancer free, and when possible, she wants to make memories with her family, including husband, Kyle, and children, Karsyn and Kolt, and their dog, Blue. — Standard-Radio Post/Ken Esten Cooke
Even with that, nothing helped. The pain didn’t go away and by November, she couldn’t even hold her children, who were three and five at the time. “I couldn’t hug them,” she said. “I couldn’t pick them up or anything because there was so much pain. It got to the point where I couldn’t even lift my right arm.” Dr. George referred Christa to Dr. Lance Love. After examining Christa, Dr. Love quickly sent her to the Hill Country Memorial Breast Center for a mammogram. “I knew at some point something was wrong because Emily (Ottmers) is usually so talkative. When she doesn’t talk much, there’s something wrong,” Christa said of her friend who is a technician at the HCM Breast Center. Ottmers told Christa that Dr. Love was waiting for her and Kyle in his office, and she knew something was wrong so she called her mom and said, “It’s bad.”
Christa said she and her family had gotten to know Dr. Love personally when he coached her daughter’s soccer team. When Dr. Love and his nurse came into the room, he got emotional before even telling her what was found. “He told me and he said, it’s bad. I had never anticipated cancer. I just wasn’t prepared for that at all,” she said. She remembers Kyle asking, “Well what do you mean, like the C word?” Dr. Love shook his head and said yes. “And that’s when the roller coaster ride began,” she said. “It was totally out of the blue,” Kyle said. “It was like walking into a ball of fire. We never expected that to happen to us.” While Dr. Love was 99% sure of the diagnosis, they did a biopsy mid-afternoon and Dr. Love called her around 5:30 p.m. and told her that yes, she had Stage 3 B Inflammatory Breast Cancer, a very rare and aggressive
form of cancer. “I immediately felt like it was a death sentence,” Christa said. “What am I going to do? My babies are so young. How am I going to get through this? I want to see my children grow up.” She says not seeing her children, Kolt and Karsyn, grow up was her biggest fear, along with not knowing the next step. “She was probably stronger than I was when we got the news,” Kyle said. “It was a total rude awakening. “Walking out of Dr. Love’s office that afternoon, all I could think about was how was I going to raise our kids by myself and what the kids were going to miss. She was going to miss walking our son down the aisle and she was going to miss me walking our daughter down the aisle.” Treatment “I turned 34 the day I met my oncologist,”
