Cancer and Clinical Services Patient Stories

As a manager of events at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Kim Knight is typically hands-on when all hands are on the events deck, ensuring logistics run smoothly from start to finish, whether that means moving hefty boxes, hanging yards-long signage or deftly moving tables. She’s not only a planner; she’s a doer.

That’s why in the summer of 2022, when she was planning events for the new Ohio State Outpatient Care Dublin facility opening, Kim figured all of the lifting, pushing, hanging and hustling had re-aggravated an old shoulder injury.

“I went to see my orthopedic doctor,” Kim explains, “thinking for sure he would X-ray my shoulder and confirm my thoughts.”

And while he did confirm a tear within her shoulder, he also saw something more troubling: lesions on the bones within her left clavicle and shoulder.

“Until then, I was in good health. The only medication I took was a daily multivitamin,” Kim says. “I didn’t even consider that this could be something cancer related.”

Kim broke the news of a possible cancer diagnosis to her husband, Clarence. “He was shocked. I went in for my shoulder and came out scheduled for an MRI stat and a referral to an oncologist at The James.”

After the MRI and additional testing, Kim learned her diagnosis: multiple myeloma, a rare cancer that develops when a type of white blood cell multiplies abnormally, building up in the bone marrow and eating away at the bones.

Kim’s daughter, Ayanna, “was very emotional and scared,” Kim shares. “She’s an only child and we have a very close relationship.” While Ayanna had been planning a move to Colorado that fall, she decided to stay with her mother throughout the treatment process.

Ironically, one of Kim’s sisters had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer the previous year, so Kim had been regularly traveling to and from South Carolina to take care of her. As Kim explains, “I was dealing with her diagnosis all that time, and then there was this drastic shift to what I was facing.”

Two weeks after Kim’s diagnosis, she started 16 rounds of chemotherapy along with a monthly infusion of a drug to mitigate bone erosion. By March, Kim’s health care team at The James was pleased with her progress, the reduction in cancer cells and her body’s ability to meet all the benchmarks needed to receive a stem cell transplant.

“We harvested my own stem cells for the transplant,” Kim says. “That was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. But I trusted my oncologist, who we call ‘Dr. D.’ (Srinivas Devarakonda, MD), and his team. It was worth it for my survival.”

Kim had researched Dr. Devarakonda before she met with him, and when they did meet, she was impressed. “He was so kind, and I knew he was top notch in his area of multiple myeloma – that he’d had a lot of success in treating his patients.

“What struck me that day,” she continues, “is that he took out a sheet of paper and literally drew out my diagnosis – what it meant in layman’s terms, went through what my chemo treatment would be, what the stem cell transplant meant – it was a visual of my cancer journey. To have this sheet of paper of what was going on in my body and what to expect – it empowered me.”

And now? “I look back over the care I had at The James, and I feel extremely blessed to be working at Ohio State,” Kim says. “You get this diagnosis, you’re scared and don’t know where to turn or go, so being able to talk with the people who work with the cancer team, who know the cancer program, gave me an opportunity to understand what my next steps would be.

“Plus,” she adds, “I cannot express enough gratitude to my personal ‘Health Squad’ and what their support meant to me. My family, especially my sister, Flora, who was like my own Nurse Nightingale, and my dear friend, Linda Reynolds, plus so many more friends and colleagues. Their support was crucial to my successful journey throughout treatment and beyond.”

Today, two years later, Kim is still in remission.

“My faith strengthens me. I am thankful to God each and every day. Every morning I pray, and my first words are, ‘Thank You for giving me an opportunity to see another day to do your will.’”