Hidden cancers and their cost
By Kirsten Thacker
Washington
(Editor’s note: In 1994, on her fourth birthday, Kirsten Thacker took a tumble down a flight of stairs. As a result, doctors found and removed a tumorous kidney. She thought she was done with cancer. This is the rest of her story.)
My name is Kirsten Thacker. I am 36 years-old, married and living in the state of Washington. In 2022, my husband and I began an egg donor cycle in an attempt to have a child. We received four embryos and began transferring them in 2023. We did three transfers and I got sicker with each attempt. By the third transfer, I was violently ill. I couldn’t hold down food or water. I felt like my body was shutting down. I was miserable.
I began researching and learned about neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), slow-growing tumors which can form in hormone-producing glands, often in the gastrointestinal tract. After each attempted transfer, I explained my symptoms to my gastroenterologist, and each time, as he had for the last five years, he said my symptoms could not possibly be related because, if they were, that would mean I had neuroendocrine cancer, which he said was too rare a condition for that to be the case, and he refused to look into it any further. I knew how I felt, and I was tired of not getting the help and attention I deserved.
So, I demanded a gastrin blood test to see how much gastrin was secreted in my stomach. Gastrin is the hormone that tells your stomach how much acid to manufacture for digestion. Test results showed my gastrin secretions were six times higher than normal. My online research indicated such high levels could be a sign of cancer. Still, my gastroenterologist dismissed the results as skewed by my strong heartburn medication. He said he thought my test results had nothing to do with cancer. He also pointed out that I’d had multiple endoscopies, none of which had found any cancer.
I would not be deterred. I asked for a PET scan. Results showed significant uptake in my pancreatic head and liver. Uptake refers to the amount of radioactive tracer absorbed by the body’s cells and tissues. Abnormal uptake can be a sign of cancer. I started to freak out. It took three days for me to finally get hold of my gastroenterologist. He apologized, saying he was wrong and I was right. He ordered another endoscopy and ultrasound to try to find the tumors, but when I awoke from the procedure, they told me they’d found no tumors. I told the doctors this was unacceptable. I set out to find someone who would listen to me, but it was difficult to get people to listen because I had had no biopsies to make my case, just the PET scan. I was running into wall after wall after wall trying to find someone to help me. Then I found the “Hutch,” the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. They listened to me and said they would take me on as a patient. I just needed a referral from my gastroenterologist.
It took another two weeks, but I got the referral. The Fred Hutch staff looked at my PET scan and determined it had been read incorrectly. The problem areas revealed by the scan were not in the pancreas and liver, but in my duodenum. Fred Hutch did their own endoscopy and, sure enough, found a good-sized tumor in my duodenum. I don’t how it had been missed all these years.
Now, I’ve experienced pain for years from a lump under the scar where doctors removed my cancerous kidney when I was four. I figured it for a hernia, but my former doctors insisted it was not. My surgeon at Fred Hutch listened to me, though, and when he removed the tumor from my duodenum, he went in through my original scar and fixed the hernia as well. It still makes me angry, and it still breaks my heart that we had to lose three precious embryos because my regular providers just refused to listen to me. This experience completely changed the way I look at my health and the medical system. My story is about learning to listen to your body, asking questions, pushing for answers and realizing that taking care of yourself must become something in which you actively participate.
We must be our own advocates, to stand up for what’s right. We must be able to make sure we’re doing enough research, so we know what to ask for and how to ask for it. Being your own best advocate is what gets you the help you need. It’s what got me the help I needed. I wish more people realized that.
(Editor’s note: In 2019, Kirsten and her husband got pregnant on their own, but lost their son after just 16 weeks. Two years later, she had a miscarriage. That’s when they decided to try an egg donor. “We transferred our fourth and final embryo on Halloween 2025. He was born at 26 weeks. He was perfect. He came out screaming. He was so strong. He was drinking, he was eating, he was breathing, he didn’t need tubes down his throat. And then four days later, he got a sudden, unexpected blood infection and died. I don’t know if we have it in us financially or even emotionally to try another egg donor. It’s a lot to think about.”)
