For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Kelly Glover and I have been battling Thymic Cancer for over 11 years now.   I was first diagnosed in September of 2008. I have always been pretty healthy and put considerable time into lifting weights 3-4 times per week and cycling three times per week.  Around the Fall of 2007, I began to feel extremely fatigued and at times, could barely get through a workday. I began to gain weight as my activity level dropped, but my food intake remained the same.  I finally went to see my doctor after I ballooned up to 242 lbs and just felt terrible most of the time. My regular doctor was not in, so I had one of his partners who was covering for him. This ended up being incredibly important as this doctor was very thorough.  He ended up ordering an echocardiogram after detecting a mild heart murmur. He said he thought it was probably nothing, but wanted to be on the safe side since I had gained around 50 lbs since my last visit, 6 months earlier! I have to note the doctor’s disgust and disbelief that I had let myself get this out of shape in such a short amount of time.

The doctor’s appointment was on Monday, September 15, 2008, the echocardiogram was the next Friday, September 19, 2008.  I had arrived at Just Wingin’ It to meet my best friends, Mark and Aaron for a few beers and wings. Hanging with those guys is always fun and I knew it would get my mind off of waiting on the results of the echo.  That was not how the night was going to go, though. I had an unrecognized call and let it go to voicemail, like I always do. But, when I checked the message a few minutes later, it was my regular doctor. The message said, “Kelly, I hate to leave this as a message, but you need to get to the Emergency Room at St. Francis South, we found a mass in your chest.  I have already called them and told them you are on your way, sorry.”. Aaron later told me he knew something was wrong because my face went white. I don’t think I was in shock, but it was definitely a jolt, like being punched in the gut. They did a CT Scan and found a 10 cm X 17 cm, 3.5 lb mass in my chest, that was pushing up against my pulmonary artery. That would explain the fatigue and ultimate lack of energy that led to my 50 lb weight gain!

I was scheduled to see a thoracic surgeon at St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis.  He said all he could offer me was a knife, and that I needed to see an oncologist to see what I was dealing with.  I had a biopsy the next day where they drilled through my breast plate and then inserted a needle into the tumor to get a sample. This was just the beginning of the pain I would be experiencing.  I waited four days, or an eternity, it seemed about the same to me. I finally got a phone call on the morning of Friday, September 26, 2008…the tumor was malignant. I had cancer in my chest.  Everything felt very surreal at that moment. It was kind of like when you have exaggerated thoughts or hallucinations with a fever. It reminded me of when Roger Waters sings the lyrics, “my hands felt just like two balloons”, from the song “Comfortably Numb”.  This was the beginning of my fight to stay alive, my fight with cancer.

My next appointment was with an Oncologist named Mary Lou Meijer.  She was exactly what I would expect an oncologist would be. She was very business-like and at the same time calm, and comforting.  After reviewing my file, she referred me to IU Simon Cancer Center in downtown Indianapolis. They have one of the best Thoracic Oncology programs in the world.  My Oncologist, Dr. Patrick Loehrer, was known worldwide as Dr, Thymoma. This is what I had, Thymic cancer, Thymoma. A lot of people said I really had some bad luck, but I see it the other way around.  I consider myself to be very fortunate to have the best thymic cancer oncologist in the world right in my own back yard, I mean it literally took me 15-20 minutes to get down to Mel and Bren Simon Cancer Center! And I also had the utmost respect for my surgeon, Dr. Karen Reiger.  I can’t say enough good things about my treatment with these two doctors. So after meeting with both the oncologist and the surgeon, we decided that the surgery would be on Thursday, October 9, 2008.

The surgery was called a clamshell thoracotomy (Google that and click on images, sorry). This is a procedure where the incision is made across the chest rather than vertically along the sternum. The reason was that the tumor was so large that Dr. Reiger could not remove it from the more traditional method of “cracking the chest”. As I’m sure you can imagine, the recovery from a surgery this invasive is not easy. It took eight weeks before I could return to work and I could not do full days at first return. I was doing a lot of hands on quality inspection in my job as a Quality Engineer at Wellman Furnaces in Shelbyville, IN. Depending on what stage of fabrication we were in, depended on how fatigued I was towards the end of a regular work day. I can’t be more thankful of the support I received from Dwayne Boyce, Jay Cherry, Bob Longstreet, and Jerry Gahimer. Not only did these gentlemen support me in my initial diagnosis and recovery, but through three recurrences and their subsequent recoveries, all while I was finishing my Mechanical Engineering degree and employed with Wellman Furnaces, Inc. full time. It was very difficult and stressful at times, and I am thankful for their patience, understanding and compassion.

At a six month checkup in February of 2016, my CT scans once again showed new growth in my chest. At this point in my journey with cancer, surgeries were no longer a solution to the new tumor growth. Part of this was due to the fact that the tumors kept coming back and I was going to need something that fought the disease from a systematic approach and another reason was that one of the tumors was located next to the aorta-pulmonary window and the risk of death during surgery outweighed the possible success of successful and sustainable removal. I remember going into my last surgery in August of 2012, wondering how many times we could do this before it became a problem or just not possible. I began to question when this disease was going to beat the treatments, when was it going to beat me?

Once I learned that surgeries were no longer an option, I began to look into clinical trials. So in April of 2016, my new girlfriend, Sonja Nickels, flew to Indianapolis and the next day we began my search for a clinical trial to slow the growth of the tumors. By June of 2016, I was back at the Mel and Bren Simon, IU Cancer Center and my clinical trial was about to begin…

You know, when I think about what really matters, to me anyway, it comes down to relationships and experiences. At the end of our lives they say, “You will regret the things you didn’t do, m ore than the things you did.”. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know this, each one of us is given a set amount of time on this earth; and we can use that time however we see fit. A few of us are given the chance to view that time from a different vantage point, with a new perspective. People always say to me, “Man Kelly, you sure have had a run of bad luck.”, and I always say, “No, I don’t think so, I consider myself very lucky.” “Lucky?”, they say with a laugh! “But how do you deal with the fear? Knowing the end may be so close for you!” I say, “If you let the fear creep in, it will paralyze you and consume you, then before you know it, you can’t even move. But if you can move, even just a little, then you know your alive. It doesn’t take much, just something. Put your feet on the floor, stand up, take a step, then another. On the most basic level as human beings, we have to Just Keep Moving.”.

KG