Christa Klaerner

4 | THINK PINK Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Facing Cancer

Diagnosed at a young age with an aggressive cancer, Klaerner’s fight involved family, friends

By Yvonne Hartmann

Standard-Radio Post managing editor

An 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. 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.”

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

Christa said of meeting Dr. Mark DeLeon on Dec. 4, 2015. “That was an awful birthday present.”

While she trusted the doctors here, Christa wanted a second opinion. She had made an appointment at MD Anderson.

But after meeting Dr. DeLeon, Christa decided to stay close to home for treatment.

“The cancer had inflamed my entire breast and I didn’t have time because it was growing so fast. That was so scary,” she said. “I couldn’t think straight.”

By Monday, Christa was at the hospital having a port put in and having scans of her entire body.

The next day, one week from her diagnosis, she had her first chemotherapy treatment. At that point, surgery to remove the tumor wasn’t an option because of its size.

Christa underwent six rounds of chemo with four different drugs.

After the chemo, she had a double mastectomy in May of 2016. She was given a choice of doing a single or double, but she chose to do both since there was a 75% chance that the cancer would come back in the other breast.

“To me it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to have to go through this again,” Christa said.

Because the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes, she did have to have some of them removed, as well.

After healing from the mastectomy, she had to do six and one-half weeks of painful daily radiation, which gave her third-degree burns on her breast and under her armpit.

Once she recovered from the radiation, she had to do another 12 rounds of chemo with the Herceptin drug.

Then came the breast reconstruction surgery.

“That was a whole different experience, as well,” she said.

Dr. Love referred her to a surgeon in Austin, Dr. Christine Fisher, who Christa said is “amazing.”

Because of her type of cancer, she wasn’t a candidate for implants, so they had to take fat and skin from her inner thighs to rebuild her breasts in an 8½-hour surgery.

Throughout her entire treatment journey, Christa continued to teach, not missing many days from work, even though the four, five and six chemo rounds were pretty tough because she was getting so fatigued and sick.

She would work in the mornings and go home and sleep to be rested when her kids came home.

Because losing her hair was so painful, Klaerner had a shaving party with friends and family, including husband Kyle and children, Kolt and Karsyn. — Submitted photo

Support

“Thank goodness for family support,” she said.

Her husband, parents (Bruce and Linda Ottmers) and in-laws (Virginia and Ron Fisher and Sammy and Phyliss Klaerner) all pitched in to help as did many of their very close friends.

“Everybody wanted to know how they could help,” Christa said. “And honestly, I think sometimes I feel that it’s the little things like a text message, a note or a phone call that really inspired me. Just knowing people were thinking about me and praying for me was the biggest support.”

Her friends brought food, sat with her at treatments and one friend even cleaned her house.

And Kyle was by her side through her entire journey.

Kyle also received support from people in the community who reached out to him, and now he tries to do the same for others.

The kids

Christa and Kyle were honest with their children from the beginning.

“We sat them down and told them everything. We talked about it and we prayed about it,” she said. “They lived it day-in and day-out.”

Kolt asked his mother if she was going to die and her response was “absolutely not. That just means Mama has to fight really hard and I have to stay healthy.”

She was glad her children were young, but they do remember a lot.

Karsyn recently told her mom that when she was in kindergarten, she would sit on the swing and cry. “I was so sad and worried about you, Mama,” she said.

Not being able to hug her mom was the hardest part of the journey for Karsyn.

“Christa was just amazing through the whole process,” Kyle said. “I’ve never met anybody as strong as her and someone who is so dedicated to me, our kids and her school family kids.

“I never thought I could love her any more than I did, but seeing what she went through makes me love her even more,” he said.

Kyle said one of the worst parts for him was seeing her hurting and not being able to do something about it.

“Watching her made me stronger,” he said.

During Christa’s journey, Kyle was diagnosed with severe migraines and there were days when his head hurt so badly he didn’t want to get out of bed. But there was Christa popping out of bed, getting dressed and going to school.

“I thought to myself, put on your big boy panties. It’s time to go to work,” Kyle said.

Role model

“It hit me hard,” she said when she was diagnosed. “At first, I threw myself a pity party. Why me? Why me?

“It took me about a day, and then I thought I just can’t sit here and be depressed,” she said. “I had to fight for my kids, my husband and my family. I wasn’t going to give up, which I could easily have done.”

There were days she didn’t have the desire or energy to get out of bed.

“But I wanted to show my kids that even when life really stinks, you have to get up and face your problems. So I did,” she said.

Christa remembers watching a women’s powerlifting event during the Summer Olympics with her children. Commenting that the competitor was so strong, her son’s response still brings a tear to her eye.

“My sweet little five-year-old son looked at me and said, ‘No Mama, she’s not strong. You are strong because you are beating cancer,’” she said.

There’s a reason

Christa still finds herself questioning why she had cancer.

She was young. She didn’t fit the mold for that type of cancer. She was healthy. She doesn’t carry the gene.

She does know her cancer is hormone-related and as a result, she also had to have a partial hysterectomy.

“We don’t always understand the reason,” she said. “There’s a reason God gave me this. I’ve learned to not take life for granted. We need to live in the moment and cherish it. We are not promised tomorrow.”

“I have always considered myself a great dad, but I think this has made me a better husband and a better person,” Kyle said. “It makes me think a lot harder on my decisions and my actions.”

The future

December 2020 will mark five years Christa is cancer free.

Looking back, there are a couple of things she says she would have done differently.

“The first thing I would do is shave my head. As silly as it sounds, it is actually pretty painful to lose your hair. It felt like needles in my scalp.” They had held a shaving party where several of their close friends shaved their heads, as well as her dad, brother and Kyle.

She would also document her journey more with photos and journaling.

Because everything happened so fast, Christa didn’t have time to find out what resources were available to her. That has her thinking about what she can do to help others going through their cancer journey.

The families of cancer patients also need support, saying that other husbands reached out and offered words of encouragement and help to Kyle.

“I feel like it is my passion to help others get through the experience,” Christa said. “It’s a hard one to get through. I hope I have inspired others with my story and to always remember to never give up.”

Advice

Kyle’s advice is to find someone to talk to. “If you are not man enough to sit down and cry with somebody, you don’t have a heart,” he said. “Always find someone to talk to.”

“My advice is to talk to your doctor,” Christa said. “You have to listen to your body. Get checked because even young women are getting cancer.”

And stay off the internet. “Reading all of that information is so stressful and so depressing,” she said.

“I’m just glad I didn’t give up,” she said.