Keri Darling survived follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma | bendamustine | rituximab | immunotherapy

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DESCRIPTION

In March 2025, Keri Darling fell out of bed and hit her head.  A trip to the doctor revealed a large mass on her pancreas.  After a series of scans, Keri received a phone call at work from a nurse who told her she had cancer; not cancer of the pancreas, but a type of blood cancer, Stage IV follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  She was put on a regimen of chemotherapy, bendamustine, followed by immunotherapy, rituximab.  Keri has achieved survivorship, but each day deals with severe fatigue, which she believes is tied to her chemo regimen.  She still goes in for bimonthly injections of rituximab and says he expects to always be dealing with some level of fatigue.  Nonetheless, she finds the time and energy to help others as a cancer coach.

Two years prior to March 2025, Keri was constantly feeling fatigued.  This was annoying, but she had no idea what was behind her feeling so tired so often.  Then in the middle of the night on a Friday, she got out of bed, fell and hit her head.  She and her husband went to the emergency room.  After some scans, doctors detected a large mass on Keri’s pancreas.  She and her husband were terrified that she had pancreatic cancer.  A nurse referred her to an oncologist and a gastroenterologist. 

Keri said this wasn’t a good time for her to deal with a potential cancer diagnosis.  She was just about to start a new job and the insurance from her previous job was going to lapse in a week.  A nurse urged Keri to get insurance through COBRA, which she did.  Nonetheless, she still had to juggle her health and a new job. 

She went to a GI doctor who performed a biopsy.  Keri was at work when she received a call from a nurse telling her she had been diagnosed not with pancreatic cancer, but with Stage IV follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  In terms of treatment, she was given three options and chose a mix of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.  The chemotherapy was bendamustine and the immunotherapy was rituximab.

Keri said she had been prescribed medication to combat the ensuing nausea, but that the toughest part of her chemo regimen was the constant fatigue.  She was also plagued with cognitive issues that resulted in post-its all over her home and a lot of attention paid to the calendar on her phone.

Keri Darling says if she thinks to the time before she started feeling constant fatigue in 2023, and thought of her health as 100 percent, now her health is at around 40 percent.  She says every day she feels fatigued.  It is merely a question of how fatigued she will feel, but she approaches each day as a chance for her health to improve over the previous day.

Additional Resources:

Keri’s coaching website:

https://www.nexttogether.co (NOT .com)

TRANSCRIPT

Keri Darling

Bruce Morton: Greetings and welcome.  This is the Cancer Interviews podcast, and I’m your host, prostate cancer survivor Bruce Morton.  Our guest on this episode overcame a great deal to survive Stage IV non-Hodgkin follicular lymphoma.  Keri Darling of Denver, Colorado has taken what she has learned and continues to learn from her journey, to help others.  Now, let’s listen to a story that just be might able to help you or a loved one.  Keri, welcome to Cancer Interviews.

Keri Darling: Thank you so much, Bruce.  I am delighted to be here.

BM: Before we get to your cancer journey, we want to learn a bit about your life away from cancer.  If you would, briefly tell us about where you grew up, what you have done for work and what you like to do for fun.

KD: I am from Denver, Colorado.  My business background is in corporate human resources.  I am currently a cancer coach.  My husband and I have three dogs, a cat and a fish.  They are all rescues and if you didn’t know it, you can rescue a fish at a bait shop.  For fun, we do theater, music events, things like that.

BM: For just about all of us on a cancer journey, there was that point in time when we noticed something abnormal about our health, which led to a call for medical attention and ultimately a cancer diagnosis?  For you, when did you notice something wrong?

KD: In March of 2025, I got up on a Friday night in the middle of the night, I fell and hit my head and knocked myself out.  We wound up in the emergency room.  They were trying to figure out why I had fallen and what caused that.  While we were in the ER, the doc came in and said they needed to do more scans.  They were very concerned about a large mass on my pancreas.  Everything at that moment kind of shifted from why did I pass out and fall, to my having this large mass.

BM: And what ultimately led to the diagnosis?

KD: Six scans later, the conclusion was I had a large mass on my pancreas.  My husband and I were sitting in the emergency room.  We were thinking I had pancreatic cancer.  We were terrified, absolutely terrified at that point.  I remember telling the nurse as they sent us home, they sent us with a referral to oncology and gastroenterology.  I said to the nurse this isn’t going to work for me.  I can’t do this right now.  I had just changed jobs.  I had just started a new job four weeks prior, my insurance was scheduled to lapse the next week.  She said to me that I had to get COBRA insurance, and that was the first miracle of many miracles in my story.

BM: I have to tell you from a distance, what little I have heard, I am no doctor, but I have done enough of these interviews to know that few cancers metastasize faster than pancreatic cancer.  I can only try to imagine what is going through your head as you got this news and you are trying to juggle insurance and you are trying to juggle a new job.  What was that confluence like?

KD: It was terrifying.  I think we went through all of the stages of grief in the three weeks between my falling down and my getting my diagnosis.  I had to tell my employer.  It was very difficult.  One thing I did do, was I followed the nurse’s advice and I got COBRA.  That was a fantastic decision at that point in time.  So, definitely a miracle there, but for us, it was scary.  It was so scary.  We had been reading on Google, we knew the statistics, they were really, really bad and we wondered what was going to happen next.  That was the longest three weeks of my life.

BM: By the way, we hope you will find time to like and subscribe to the Cancer Interviews channel.  And if you click on the bell icon, that way you will be notified anytime we post an interview.  We also want to remind you that Cancer Interviews is not a distributor of medical advice.  If you seek medical advice, please contact a licensed health care professional.

At this point, Keri, I think there are some dots that need to be connected.  You were diagnosed with lymphoma, but you had initially heard about a mass on your pancreas.  What led to a diagnosis of follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma?

KD: The gastroenterologist went in and did a biopsy.  They came back the results, and they called me at work.  I got a call from a nurse while I was at work, and she said I have lymphoma.  She said I have cancer, but have the “good” kind of cancer, so if you are going to have cancer, this is the one that you want.  I didn’t know what to do with that, Bruce.  I was standing in my office, kind of looking at the wall, trying to figure out what were going to be the next steps.  From there, we got a referral to oncology.  I had a great oncologist here in Colorado.  He sat down with us on our first visit and went through where we were at, and where we were going. 

BM: You are talking about the medical piece in all of this, but what about the emotional piece.  We already know that when you are diagnosed, that is a horrific day of singular proportions, but each diagnosis is different, each person is different in their makeup.  Throw in all these variables, and for you, how did you handle this news?

KD: I was relieved that it wasn’t pancreatic cancer.  I don’t agree that cancer is good, but I will tell you my cancer experience was probably the great gift that I have ever received.  It stopped me.  My response to stress and difficult things in the past had been to go to work, and up to that point, I had been working seven days a week, fourteen hours a day because that is what I did, and I had been doing it for years.  My whole life I had worked that way, and when I got that diagnosis, I really had to stop and think about what matters nd what is important and how am I going to live my life going forward, and am I living my life now, the way that I want to be, and the answer was ‘no.’  The answer was no.  I was in a really difficult position with that new job and I ended up leaving that new job a couple months down the road.  We were laying in bed one night and I told my husband, “I don’t accept this.  I don’t accept this diagnosis.  I don’t accept any prognosis that they give me.  I am going to do everything I can to make this work for us, and then I am going to change the way that I live.” 

BM: Let’s talk about your treatment.  Did you have treatment options?

KD: I did have treatment options.  I had the option to do nothing and do wait and watch.  I had the option of bendamustine and rituximab, which we chose, and then there was a third option, which I don’t remember.  I went through six rounds of chemo and immunotherapy.  I am still in treatment.  I still go in for bimonthly injections of rituximab.

BM: Let’s make this a two-part question, first the chemo, then the immunotherapy.  Chemotherapy is never pleasant, but in your experience, what was the toughest part of your chemotherapy regimen?

KD: The doctor dealt with the nausea really well, so we pre-planned for the nausea.  I was well-equipped with the prescriptions to combat that.  I think the hardest part for me was the fatigue, and that is something that hasn’t gone away.  That is something I still struggle with.  The fatigue was intense, and I think that as I look back, that was the only symptom of cancer that I had had prior to that fall, and when we look back at it now, my husband can go back to a point two years prior when we were on our honeymoon and he said I spent our entire honeymoon in bed, and I didn’t know what was wrong.  Now we know what was wrong. 

BM: Were there any cognitive issues for you?

KD: Absolutely.  There still are.  The brain fog is absolutely real.

BM: Immunotherapy.  For you, what was and is the toughest part?

KD: I would definitely say that it is the fatigue.  It has definitely gotten worse since I ended my chemo regimen.  That is the only thing we can trace it back to.  We looked at all the possible options as to what it could be causing it, we have every blood test we can think of.  They said it was menopause, they said it was depression, they said it was my weight, and all of those things, that is not what it is.  So, the only thing we can trace the fatigue is the chemo.  It is something that I deal with daily.  I don’t think there is ever a day when I wake up not tired.  It is a question of how tired I am going to be on any given day.  There are days when after I have taken a shower I am ready to go back to bed.

BM: The chemotherapy is behind you, but the immunotherapy is not, but from a distance just being past the chemotherapy sounds like progress.  Did you reach a point in which you felt you were trending toward survivorship?

KD: I think it was my fourth cycle of chemo when they did a PET scan and came back and said there was No Evidence of Disease, so that was positive news; but one of the things the oncologist told me when we had our first meeting with him was that this is a cancer that comes back, so it is very likely that I am going to see it again, and that is just kind of the expectation.  So, that is something that I live with.  I still have incredible scan anxiety.  I didn’t think I was going to, then I realize that I definitely do.  Scans so far have been positive, but there is always that fear, that feeling that this is going to come back and we are going to have to do it again. 

BM: As for the here and now, Keri, to some degree, you have answered this question, but I just want to see if there are additional layers worthy of addressing.  If we can go back to the point, two years before your fall, and call that 100 percent, these days, how close are you at 100 percent?

KD: Maybe 40 percent.

BM: Is this a high-water mark or can you envision it getting better?

KD: I hope that it will get better.  There is always that possibility.  I have decided that I accept the way that it is and I am going to get up and show up, regardless.  You know, we can only do what we can do, so our best is relative every day of our lives and I kind of operate on an idea that on an idea that if I am one percent better today than I was yesterday I am making tremendous progress because at the end of the year, that puts me 365 percent better.  So, I work with where I am at, I focus on the one percent and see what happens next.

BM: Now, for all of us who have been on a cancer journey, it has been a learning experience.  For you, what have you learned that you put into play as a cancer coach?

KD: The biggest thing I have learned is the importance of community, and I realized as I was going through my experience that my husband and I did not have asolid community in our lives and how important that was; but I also realized how much your community changes and sometimes it is very normal when you have cancer for people in your life to drift away or disappear, and that feels terrible.  That was the hardest thing emotionally for me that the people I thought I could depend on, disappeared.  Then again, some people lean in.  That really was the foundation for me becoming a coach where I work with cancer patients.  What I do with them is provide one-on-one support for patients who are going through a similar experience.  So, we meet once a week to check in and see how things are going. 

BM: And if somebody wanted to avail themselves of your expertise, how would they do it?

KD: The best way to do it is via email, and that is at https://www.keri@nexttogether.co.  We can set up a phone call or a Zoom call and get to know each other, and my wanting to know how I can help.

BM: All right, Keri, we are going to close now, and we will close with a question we often close with. If you had a private audience with someone just diagnosed with lymphoma or any type of blood cancer or any type of blood, this person may have lots of questions and you lots of answers, but if there was one thing you imparted to this individual that you wanted to make sure they didn’t forget, what would it be?

KD: Lean on other people.  There are people out there that care.  Even if you feel like you’re alone, you’re not; and if you don’t know where to find those people, reach out to me, so I can help.

BM: That’s sage advice, Keri.  Keri Darling, Denver, Colorado, thanks for sharing a story that will be a source of information and inspiration to anyone who will listen.  Keri, thanks so much for being with us on Cancer Interviews.

KD: Thank you, Bruce.  I appreciate it.

BM: That brings to a close this episode of Cancer Interviews and we want to remind you as we always do at this time, if you or a loved one are on cancer journey, or think you might be, you are not alone.  There are people out there like Keri Darling who can be of immense help.  So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.

Additional Resources:

Keri’s coaching website:

https://www.keri@nexttogetether.co (NOT .com)

SHOW NOTES

Keri Darling – Stage IV Follicular non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Survivor – Denver, Colorado, USA

In March 2025, Keri Darling fell out of bed and hit her head.  A trip to the doctor revealed a large mass on her pancreas.  After a series of scans, Keri received a phone call at work from a nurse who told her she had cancer; not cancer of the pancreas, but a type of blood cancer, Stage IV follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  She was put on a regimen of chemotherapy, bendamustine, followed by immunotherapy, rituximab.  Keri has achieved survivorship, but each day deals with severe fatigue, which she believes is tied to her chemo regimen.  She still goes in for bimonthly injections of rituximab and says he expects to always be dealing with some level of fatigue.  Nonetheless, she finds the time and energy to help others as a cancer coach.

Additional Resources:

Keri’s coaching website:

https://www.keri.nexttogether.co  (NOT .com)

Time Stamps:

01:38 Keri’s cancer journey when she fell and hit her head.

02:22 Describes what led to her diagnosis.

03:42 The challenge of dealing with her diagnosis, lapsing insurance and a new job.

05:04 Is asked how a pancreatic mass turned into a diagnosis of lymphoma.

06:15 Keri’s reaction to her diagnosis.

08:20 Is asked if she had treatment options.

09:15 Reveals the toughest part of her chemotherapy regimen.

10:48 Names the toughest part of her immunotherapy regimen.

12:01 Keri is asked if she felt she was moving toward survivorship.

13:38 Is asked how close her health is compared to pre-diagnosis.

17:37 Advice to others.

KEYWORDS (tags):

follicular non-hodgkin lymphoma

rituximab

bendamustine

chemotherapy

immunotherapy

cancer coach

pancreatic cancer

blood cancer

Breakfast with Keri in Denver