When faced by disease, it is not uncommon for individuals to rely on a small army of people to offer aid in varying elements of the journey. Be it friends, family or neighbors, the roles of each change as they look for ways to help the person they care for.
In 2015, Karen Lynch would quickly learn this lesson. One doctor’s appointment would alter the role of her three children, Miranda, Morgan and Tamberly, as well as her longtime friends and family members.
After spending a year voicing concern over increased fatigue and a pesky lump on her neck, she finally found reprieve in April of 2015.
Initially diagnosed locally with thyroid cancer, the mother and teacher was referred to an endocrinologist at Sutter in Modesto. This led to a PET scan, which revealed she had cancer throughout her body.
“She said I don’t think you have thyroid cancer, but I’m not sure what you have,” her daughter Tamberly Stone recalled of the doctor’s words from her mother’s Sutter appointment, adding the PET scan had shown tumors in her brain, thyroid, lungs and liver.
“So that doctor made an immediate stat referral to UCSF,” Stone said.
The family would later learn that lung cancer can at times present itself in what may appear to be the thyroid if not properly tested. Lynch was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, which had metastasized. She was told she was terminal and given a prognosis of one year.
Lynch battled not one, but seven years, against the terminal disease, passing in early June 2022.
Overnight, Stone became the daughter of a cancer survivor as well as a caregiver.
“It took a year for her to get in front of someone who took her seriously,” Stone said as she shared her mother’s journey. “Another reason why I wouldn’t stay local if something was wrong with me.”
Stone further shared that the initial growth her mom complained about was not actually her thyroid. It wasn’t hard like a tumor, but more like a sack of fluid.
As Stone reviewed the varying options for treatment with her mom, the decision was made to forgo full brain radiation. Instead, the family decided to go with Gamma Knife Treatment for the brain. Gamma Knife used precise beams of gamma rays to treat the affected areas.
“The beauty of Gamma Knife is it’s so targeted to those tumors,” Stone said. “She had six. It was amazing. They map it out, then they put her in the machine that does the radiation to those tiny tumors.”
Stone said the Gamma treatment continues to work at battling the disease long after the patient is treated. Eventually and over time, Lynch’s brain tumors were eradicated.
Throughout her battle she had countless types of chemotherapy, as well as participated in clinical trials when available. Lynch also had a lot of struggles during this time, as well as allergic reactions to different things. Not uncommon for those battling cancer, as chemotherapy and immunotherapies each come with their own list of side effects.
“It’s mental, it’s a physical, it’s emotional, it’s every single thing,” Stone said of the battles people often don’t see. “There’s so many unspoken things. The going to the emergency room, the reactions. The just feeling generally crappy or whatever.”
Lynch, however, continued to persevere and battle, in spite of the prognosis they had been given.
“I think she had the will to live. She wanted to live,” Stone said of her mother. “Even after her diagnosis she became crushed that she couldn’t work anymore. It became apparent pretty quickly that she wouldn’t be able to fight and teach.”
While Lynch was no longer able to continue career and passion as a kindergarten teacher, she did continue as a volunteer in her classroom, as long as she was physically capable.
“Her students loved her,” her daughter boasted. “She was the teacher that worked from sun up to sun down. I have pictures. Her classroom was beautiful.”
Perhaps it was her love for life, her desire to make more memories with those whom she loved, the goals she set for herself and her tenacious spirit which turned her one year to seven. Lynch did more than defy odds, she showed her family and friends grit, grace and dignity.
Through all of her trials and tribulations, the kindergarten teacher was able to live independently until things changed and changed quickly in January of 2022.
“It was just the most bizarre experience from all our experiences,” Stone said of a trip to San Francisco in late January for a scheduled chemotherapy. “She was just not okay.”
Staying the night before in a hotel, as they always had, Stone shared her mother did not wake easily the following morning. Her routine bloodwork that day, showed indeed she was not okay. Instead of receiving treatment, she was admitted for care. She would stay under care at UCSF for 12 days.
“I had to fight for her. I mean, I had to fight for her all along, but I had to really fight for her,” Stone said of her efforts to have her mom released to go home.
Lynch would now require oxygen and 24-hour care.
“When I brought her home, I really brought her home thinking I had a couple weeks,” Stone confessed. “I got her home and I thought, I’ve got a couple weeks with my mom to create this environment and this place where everyone can say good bye and she can feel happy.”
Lynch, however, once again had other plans. She still had memories to make with her children and grandchildren. So that two weeks, much to her family’s delight and surprise, turned into 17 weeks.
“I would work from home most days. We all loved on her and took care of her,” Stone said of herself and her siblings. “I got 17 weeks with my sister and brother essentially living between my house and my mom’s apartment here in town. It was a gift that she needed and that we needed. She got to see and experience all the things she wanted to.”
As Stone shared the many memories, trips and roller coaster of being her mother’s caregiver, she laughed, shed some tears and beamed as she spoke of her.
“I think what gave her life in her cancer journey and I think the reason she lived so long was because she ‘lived’ and she got to enjoy her family in a way she never would have thought,” she said. “I never thought we would get that long.”
The story of her final week of life is poetic in demonstrating how Lynch lived to see and experience all the things she wanted to.
The Friday before her passing, Lynch was able to see Stone’s eldest child, Lynch’s granddaughter graduate from Oakdale High, via live videos. The following day she wrapped the gifts she had bought her granddaughter and shared in her joy, as they were opened from the bed. That night, Stone and her three siblings gathered on the floor of their mother’s room to watch the final episode of a show together.
That Sunday morning, she didn’t wake up.
“I can see now, what I didn’t see then,” Stone said of watching back video with her mother and daughter, “which was she was fading away. I can see in that video she was there, but not there.”
Lynch concluded her battle with cancer that following Wednesday.
“It kills me, because in some ways I don’t have closure,” Stone confessed. “I didn’t say “good-bye” per se. I would not have guessed she wasn’t going to wake up. Hindsight is, she checked everything off her list.”
Stone further noted, as closure can be difficult at times, the lessons learned from her mother will be with her forever.
“I think I learned to have joy and to always have something to look forward to,” she said. “That’s something we helped her do, but she did so well. She always had something to look forward to. I just think that’s so important, because life is hard in general. Life is doubly hard when you’re battling cancer.”
Now, Stone lives as fully as possible, as a wife, mother of two, sister, friend and advocate.
“You have to fight to go to the best care, to give yourself a chance to have the best life you can have,” Stone said, adding that she talks and encourages as many as possible when she learns of their struggling with disease.
In addition to that, Stone continues a walk every year to honor her mother and raise money for research. First started in 2015, with her mom at her side, the duo once donated the money to a lung cancer non-profit. Since then, Stone has made it her mission to donate the money to Lynch’s UCSF Oncologist Collin Blakely to use toward his research.
“I’m going to give the money directly to where it’s needed,” Stone shared, noting disappointment with national non-profits who lack direct help for cancer patients while undergoing treatment. “In my case, it’s to give the money directly to Collin Blakely and his research. He’s in clinic one day a week and he’s in research the other four. It’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s the one small thing I can do.”
This year the annual “Walk in Memory of Karen,” will be hosted on Saturday, Nov. 15, beginning at 10 a.m. The event will continue to raise money for lung cancer awareness and research. The walk is set to begin at 563 Bascule Way, Oakdale, adjacent to the west side Oakdale Dog Park. Additional information can be found on the public Facebook Page, Teacher Lynch’s Journey.
“It keeps her alive,” Stone said of the event. “Teachers that taught with her, people that worked with her, they come. It’s the one time of year I get to see them.”
As for life now, what she learned and what she remembers most, Stone is very clear.
“There’s a void in my life. There always will be,” she said. “There’s a hole in my life that can’t be filled. There’s a closeness that we gained in those seven years, driving back and forth. We were always close, like best friends. It was different.”
She also feels it’s important to keep the focus on what’s in front of you.
“Life is precious. Live. We lived with her. We traveled with her. We had Sunday dinners with her,” Stone said of what she wants people to learn from her mom’s journey. “Find the time. Live the life. Don’t wait. Make the memories. We made so many precious memories with her and I am forever grateful.”
