With cancer in remission, Geneva mom looks forward to Mother’s Day

GENEVA – Jenny Caterer of Geneva is looking forward to Mother’s Day after having survived bone marrow cancer, spinal surgery and two stem cell transplants right after the birth of her daughter Kylee.

Caterer is focused on raising her daughter and making up for the time she was away for surgery, treatment and rehabilitation, according to a news release from Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva.

“While I feel like I lost precious time after my daughter was born, I’m spending every day making the most of the time we have together now,” Caterer said in the release. “Nothing is promised when it comes to myeloma, so I’m making the most of life now.”

During her second trimester in 2021, Caterer began feeling pain in her lower back that worsened after Kylee was born that November, according to the release.

By January 2022, when she had just turned 40, Caterer’s pain escalated to where she could hardly walk, according to the release.

An X-ray showed fractures in her pelvis. Further tests showed she had multiple myeloma, a type of cancer that forms in plasma cells found in bone marrow. It had impacted 80% of her bone marrow.

“This diagnosis was unusual because multiple myeloma most often occurs in the elderly who present with abnormal blood tests, not pathologic fractures,” Dr. Grace Suh, a hematologist and oncologist at Delnor, said in the release. “We knew we needed to help her quickly to come up with a treatment plan.”

Multiple myeloma is treatable, not curable, and stem cell transplants can increase life expectancy.

Caterer came in with a tumor growing into her spinal cord in the middle of her back, paralyzing her from the ribs down.

“They weren’t sure I’d ever be able to walk again, but the doctors said my odds were better because of my age,” Caterer said in the release. “Getting the surgery was a risk I felt I had to take for the sake of a normal life raising my daughter. Without my husband, daughter and the rest of my family supporting me, I’m not sure I could have done it.”

Caterer spent the next month at Northwestern Medicine Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton learning how to walk again, according to the release.

“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through. I just wanted to be home with my family doing all the normal things new moms get to do,” Caterer said in the release.

She received two stem cell transplants three months apart to allow her body to heal in between.

“The transplants worked as we had hoped. Looking at her today, you wouldn’t believe she has been through all of this in such a short span of time, from giving birth, to cord compression and learning to walk again, to two stem cell transplants,” Suh said in the release. “And her recent scans are showing no evidence of cancer. She’s in complete remission.”

Information about this type of cancer is available at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website at www.cdc.gov.