Katie Coleman, Senior Advisor for Translational Innovation at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Dr. Kimryn Rathmell shared this week, during her installation as a distinguished chair, that when she began her career, patients with metastatic kidney cancer were sent home on hospice. That very same day, I celebrated the 5 year anniversary of the day my prognosis changed.
As a stage IV kidney cancer survivor looking on with misty eyes, let me tell you what it meant to me to be in that room.
Exactly five years prior to that evening, it was through misty eyes I squeezed my husband’s hand, told him I loved him and prayed for a miracle as I was wheeled back for a high risk, radical surgery that would remove my right kidney, involve 5 wedge resections of my liver, and the ablation of 10 additional tumors. A few months later, we’d go back and burn 5 more.
A treatment option, as a patient with an ultra rare kidney cancer that was highly personalized to the specific biology of my cancer, and my only shot at a future.
I made a promise to myself that if I made it to and through that surgery, I would dedicate the rest of my life, and any time it gave me, to helping other patients that came behind me one day.
Which is what I have done every day since.
This has taken all kinds of shapes over the years as I’m sure many have watched through LinkedIn title changes and status updates as I shifted my career after spending 15+ years working in Motorsports and building software used at race tracks to pivoting to use my skills and experience to help those impacted by cancer.
I’ve built on the bleeding edge of AI, advocated and created content viewed by tens of millions, published a book, donated that book deal to fund research for a rare cancer, started a nonprofit and dedicated my nights and weekends to showing up for other patients the way those who changed my life, showed up for me.
I live and breathe this mission because this mission is the reason I am here.
It’s the reason I showed up to Dr. Rathmell’s installation with bloodshot eyes, after losing a friend to this terrible disease the night before. It’s the reason I won’t give up until every patient has the opportunity for the kind of outcome I’ve been given.
And five years after making that promise to myself, I found myself sitting in the back of that room — with no active cancer — surrounded by colleagues working toward that same future, just days before the launch of the Center for Cancer Innovation that we’ve been building since I arrived (more soon).
With misty eyes, I realized.
This is how we do it.
Every Person.
Every Discovery.
Every Time.
I can’t wait for the day my story is lost in a sea of success stories, and I feel incredibly honored to work alongside the brilliant faculty, staff, clinicians, researchers, and teams across OSUCCC – James who will help shape that future.”
More posts featuring Katie Coleman.
