Dietician Recalls ‘Worst Nightmare’ After Leg Pain Leads to Cancer Diagnosis

A registered dietitian is opening up about her devastating health diagnosis after maintaining a healthy lifestyle for many years.

Beth Kitchin, from Birmingham Alabama, considered herself very healthy and active, telling TODAY that she had “absolutely” no health problems.

“I was extremely healthy,” the 60-year-old told the outlet. “I really was a very cheap person for my insurance company.”

However, in fall 2020, Kitchin started feeling a bothersome pain on the inside of her left thigh. After an MRI in February 2021, she learned that she had tumors in both of her legs, which doctors initially believed was metastatic bone cancer.

“It was like my worst nightmare,” Kitchin — a retired assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — recalled. “My boyfriend came over, and we just cried and talked about, ‘What are we going to do?’ We were planning for me to die.”

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Kitchin received a biopsy on the tumors, which revealed she actually didn’t have metastatic bone cancer, but acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which was treatable. “So, oddly enough, someone telling me I have leukemia was a big relief,” she said.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow — the spongy tissue inside bones where blood cells are made, according to the Mayo Clinic.

By April 2021, Kitchin was in the hospital for inpatient chemotherapy, where she recalled being in “absolutely excruciating pain” from the bone tumors. She received the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin (Adriamycin), which is nicknamed the “red devil” because of its red color and serious side effects.

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Following chemotherapy, Kitchin underwent a stem cell transplant in August 2021. However, months later she faced a setback with her health journey and suffered severe swelling in her body, a skin rash, liver problems, mouth sores and was unable to walk due to stiffness, among other symptoms.

Kitchin was dealing with a complication known as graft-versus-host disease, where the donor cells begin attacking the recipient’s organs and tissues.

“My body horrified me,” she told the outlet. “I looked at myself and I saw a stranger looking back at me. It was horrifying to me. I had never felt bad about my body before.”

Kitchin now relies on a long list of medications for each symptom but has been able to recover well. Doctors say she will have a normal lifespan but health challenges can be expected along the way.

She admitted that although she’s still shaken up by the ordeal after previously being so healthy, she’s remained positive about her journey.

“I was angry. I felt like my body had betrayed me in some ways. I felt like the universe was just s—-ing on me,” Kitchin told the outlet.

“I have this new vigilance about things that I never thought I would have to be vigilant about,” she said. “It’s normal to be angry. It’s normal to be weary. But you work through it.”