By Aneeka Simonis
“IT WILL get you.”
These are the four words that changed Kristen Leknius’s life forever.
After five years of battling insufferable and undiagnosed symptoms, the Berwick mum of two was eventually told an incredibly rare cancer was growing inside her.
Up until this point she said doctors didn’t scan her or look further into the cause of her suffering, instead scribbling countless antibiotic prescriptions on their notepad or handballing her between specialists.
Little did they then know she was suffering a form of neuroendocrine cancer (NETs) – the same one that claimed the life of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Kristen, 51, clearly remembers the day she was told she was going to die.
She was sitting directly opposite her senior oncologist after being told three months of chemotherapy had been unsuccessful in shrinking the lemon-sized tumour on her pancreas and 15 liver metastases.
“He said to my husband and I, ‘it will get you’ and that we needed to sort out our financial affairs,” Kristen told.
Those words changed her life forever. Not because they prepared her for the end – but for the fight of her life.
Remarkably, Kristen survived and is now in remission.
But it was no easy feat.
It took her getting the sickest she ever did, battling a shock relapse of brain cancer – and finally, facing up to the doctor who, for a moment, robbed her of all hope to survive.
Kristen said she was almost knocking on death’s door when she finally became eligible for an experimental cancer drug at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
It took just three of the five scheduled radionuclide treatments combined with chemotherapy that cleared Kristen’s body of the life-threatening tumours.
“I was used as a case study around the world because of the amazing results,” she said.
After a major 10-hour surgery to remove most of her pancreas, gall balder, spleen and part of her liver, Kristen was cancer-free.
She spent three years in remission until October last year, when two tumours were discovered in her brain.
“I was devastated at first. But then I thought, I’d already been through the worst before,” Kristen said.
The tumours were close to Kristen’s brain stem, ruling out any possible chance of surgery.
It left radiotherapy as their best hope – and in March, Kristen was again put into remission.
“I am completely clear right now.”
Kristen’s survival is nothing short of a miracle, and she’s made it her mission to try right the wrongs she experienced during her cancer journey for the sake of others.
One of those tasks was fronting up the oncologist.
“I had to make him accountable for his actions. If I listened to him, I wouldn’t be alive. I would have gone home, made myself comfortable and prepared to die,” she said.
“I believe since I spoke with him, he’s been referring patients to the treatment. Hopefully it would have saved at least one person’s life.
“It’s my mission to change the thinking of doctors so they can do their jobs better.”
Kristen also supports others going through similar forms of cancer, working as an anonymous counsellor for the Cancer Council’s Gene Connect support program.
Kristen and her husband Richard’s children Hayley, 23, and Morgan, 21, have now both flown the coop, so the pair is now preparing for a sea change to the Mornington Peninsula next year.
“My philosophy is live healthy. Even though it was a terrible time, it changed my whole life. In a sense, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Kristen recently hosted a cancer fund-raiser in Beaconsfield, raising more than $1000 to be donated to the Cancer Council.
Steve Jobs died of NETs in 2011 after an unsuccessful surgery.
