Mother of 8 fights aggressive skin cancer: 'I won't sit down to die'

DETROIT – Kim Wesley's New Year's resolution is pretty simple: She wants to live.

The 41-year-old single mother has eight young children to raise, but an aggressive skin cancer has spread throughout her body, draining her physically.

She spent New Year's Eve getting chemo, her bright-blue eyes fixated on the hanging plastic bag filled with toxic, liquid hope.

The Swartz Creek woman, who was in remission for five years following a 2012 melanoma diagnosis, learned last year that the disease was back and had spread to her breast, abdomen, lungs and liver.

She was blindsided by the recurrence: Two months earlier, a CT scan showed no disease, she said, noting her doctor said she was in the clear. But a routine mammogram in January 2018 revealed the cancer was back.

Wesley would lose her red hair, her energy, her livelihood, her car – fallout from two potent chemo drugs that landed her in the hospital for more than a month last summer, vomiting to the point of wanting to die, asking to die.

But she doesn't remember that part. The soft-spoken woman who smiles at the nurses during chemo treatments only remembers surviving the hellish nightmare and wanting to live.

The onetime workaholic who worked full-time through chemo wants her old life back. She has always worked and taken care of her kids. She wants to be independent again, drive herself to appointments and take her kids bowling and to the movies like she used to.

She needs the chemo to work. She needs to stay strong and positive.

She needs a miracle – and a car.

After the cancer came back, Wesley became too sick to work and had to give up her full-time job as a certified nursing assistant at a Grand Blanc nursing home, where she made about $52,000 a year. She worked overtime and double-shifts to cover her bills, which included a $750-a-month mortgage and a $400 monthly car payment for her 2012 Dodge Journey, she said.

Her parents helped save her four-bedroom home; the car got repossessed after she fell behind on payments. She's now on disability: $1,053 a month.

Cancer has taken its toll, she concedes. But her hope, faith and dignity aren't up for grabs.

"I've heard that you need to stay positive ... you don't sit down to die," she said just days before her New Year's Eve chemo treatment at Beaumont Hospital's Rose Cancer Center in Royal Oak. "I've always been a strong-willed person. I'm not one of those people to say, 'I don't have this,' "

And so she fights through the nausea, the fatigue, the money woes.

Because, she says frankly, caving to despair isn't an option.

“I’m really fighting not only the cancer – but for getting my life back,” she said. “Sometimes it's too much and I get depressed and just cry. But then I remember that if I just stay positive and fight – that's how you beat cancer.”

Above all, she said, “My kids need me.”

An unusual mole

It was during a 2012 carnival outing when Wesley's mom saw a raised, dark mole on her daughter's back. It had been there awhile. It started out flat, but over time it started to raise and got darker and darker.

By the time her mom spotted it, Wesley said, the mole had turned blackish and started to itch and bleed. Her mother told her to get it checked out, so she did.

It was melanoma. It had traveled to her lymph nodes, so Wesley had two surgeries that removed the cancer and put her into remission, she said. For five years, she thought she was cancer-free and even had two children following her cancer surgery.

Wesley's children are ages 1 through 13. She is estranged from their father – they split up in 2014 – and she has taken care of the children largely with the help of her parents and three sisters.

In November 2017, Wesley had what she believed was her final routine CT scan. It showed no cancer and her doctor told her that she wouldn't need the routine scans anymore, that she was in the clear, she said.

Then, two months later, she was blindsided. Wesley went for a routine mammogram in January 2018 when lumps were discovered. A biopsy followed.

The cancer was back.

"When I read the results, it said it was melanoma and I was just in tears," recalled Wesley, who was sitting in a car with her mom when she learned the news. "I started crying. ... She started crying."

The mother and daughter then went to the doctor, who delivered more bad news.

"He said this time around surgery wasn't an option because it was in my blood and spreading to my organs," Wesley said. "He just said I had to start on the chemo."

The news also blindsided her mother, Terri Gronau, 60, who has been Wesley's main support system, driving her to appointments, watching her children and feeding them dinner every night while her daughter fights for her life.

"We were just shocked. ... I thought she was in remission," Gronau said. "To think it all started from one small spot on her back. ... It's scary and it's stressful and it makes me sick sometimes. I'd rather it be me than her."

Fighting the unthinkable

Gronau has seen her daughter through some dark days. It has been gut-wrenching for the supportive mother, who sits in the hospital parking lot with her grandchildren while their mother gets chemo. Wesley gets chemo every two weeks.

"She's got a good heart. She loves everybody," Gronau said of Wesley, her oldest child. "To see her like this, it's hard for everybody. I think it's hard for her because she's used to being the strong one. ... She's used to being the one that others could rely on."

But she watches her daughter fight through it. One strong mother supporting the other, both hiding their fears and pain for the sake of their kids.

"I see her worry about the kids. ... She tries to stay positive and she doesn't really blame anybody. That's part of her personality and spirit," Gronau said, smiling the same way her daughter does when she talks of the illness.

But the dark days have been tough. Gronau almost lost her daughter in July, when her potassium levels dropped to dangerously low levels from the two chemo drugs she was taking at the same time: Opdivo and Yervoy. The latter one she couldn't tolerate.

"There are not many people who can take those together, but they had to try it. The cancer came back so aggressively they needed to hit it aggressively. It was rough," Gronau said, recalling the nausea and vomiting were nonstop. "It was horrible. She carried a bucket. She threw up a lot."

Wesley reached a breaking point.

"She just looked at me one night ... she turned her head and said, "Mom, I need to go to the hospital, cause I'm in the dying stages,' " Gronau recalled.

Wesley spent all of June and part of July in the hospital. The Yervoy drug was stopped. The aggressive treatment did what it was supposed to do.

"Since then, they've re-scanned me. It's out of my lungs," Wesley said. "I have a couple of spots on my liver but they've gotten smaller. Right now, I'm reacting positive to the medicine."

And that's what she's holding onto.

She said her doctor told her that she has to stay on the chemo drug until it stops working. And when and if it does, she said, the doctor told her "he's got two other meds in his back pocket."

Wesley's not giving up.

She's on medical leave from her job. And her employer, she said, has told her she can come back to work when she's stronger.

Suzette Harrison, human resources coordinator at the Wellbridge of Grand Blanc nursing home where Wesley worked, describes Wesley as a reliable and hard worker who picked up shifts all the time, even when she was going through chemo.

"You could always count on her. So when this hit her, it hit her hard," Harrison said, referring to Wesley's battle with cancer. "She was always at work. ... She's a very hard worker who supported her family and herself."

According to Harrison, Wesley's coworkers often tried to persuade Wesley to stay home to get better. But Wesley wouldn't hear of it.

"I think that was more of her drive to keep pushing forward," Harrison said. "That was her strength. She wasn't just going to lay down and die. She wanted to live."

It wasn't until the aggressive chemo treatment started that Wesley finally had to give up working.

"By the time it got to me, it had already hit her harder. I knew that she was going through it. I was like, 'Kim, you should really be resting,' " said Harrison, noting that Wesley's job remains open and that she can come back to it when she feels better.

So Wesley prays for that day, each day.

"I pray for my health to get better so that my kids can have their mother. I pray for my kids to get taken care of. I pray for other people. I pray for my family," she said

The fight continues

While sitting in the hospital lobby on New Year's Eve, waiting for her name to be called for her chemo treatment, Wesley rocked back and forth in her chair while rubbing her hands on her thighs. She smiled through the anxiety, talked about missing work and joked about not liking her new white hair or her pixie cut.

When her name was finally called, she said, "That's me." And got up and walked to the chemo center wearing a T-shirt she bought for herself. It read: 'You've got this.'

Follow Tresa Baldas on Twitter:@Tbaldas.

If you are interested in helping Wesley, a Kim Wesley Cancer Fund has been set up at: https://www.gofundme.com/kimberly-wesley-cancer-fund

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mother of 8 fights aggressive skin cancer: 'I won't sit down to die'