Heather Kelts, Liver Cancer

"The advantage of NanoKnife is that it’s a lot less trying on your body."

Heather Kelts decided to have a lobster feast the day she received her cancer diagnosis.

“If I have very few meals left, I’m going to eat what I want to eat,” she told her best friend’s mom after sharing the difficult news.

Healthy living had been routine for Heather, then 28 years old. She had physicals every year, and not once had there been any problems. But when seemingly innocuous flu symptoms persisted for six months, her doctor became concerned and started running tests. It took a total of nine months for Heather to be diagnosed with cancer.

“I had gone to a liver specialist with my best friend, and the specialist told me I had primary liver cancer. And I said, ‘OK, liver cancer. So I should go down to Sylvester in Miami, and see Dr. Livingstone, and go from there right?’”

Heather remained surprisingly calm, and the doctor was concerned that she did not understand what he had said.

“Liver, cancer, Livingstone, Miami. No I got it,” said Heather.

As Heather left the specialist’s office, she called Dr. Alan Livingstone at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to make an appointment.

“I called around to get more information, and every doctor I spoke to had an experience with Dr. Livingstone, and so his was the name I did not move from,” she said.

Heather came to Miami, and under the care of Dr. Livingstone, she was initially treated surgically.

“I thought I was going to wake up with a 2- to 3-inch scar and a little Band-Aid.”

Heather was cut from sternum to hip. Dr. Livingstone had to regretfully inform her that he was unable to remove the tumor, and he gave her six months to live.

She wasn’t about to consider that prognosis.

“You got the wrong girl,” Heather told him. “Come up with a better plan.” Of the options available and presented to Heather, she chose chemoembolization, a very aggressive new treatment at the time, which has become a widely used and more manageable option since her diagnosis.

Fifteen years later, Heather is still fighting strong. In the years that she has been battling cancer, she has had three metastases to the mediastinum and three in her lungs, and has undergone about ten rounds of chemoembolization and ten major surgeries.

In early 2011, functioning on only a partial liver and having ruled out transplant as a possibility, Heather’s remaining treatment options were looking slim. Dr. Govindarajan “Raj” Narayanan recommended Heather as a candidate for NanoKnife, state-of-the-art technology that uses a targeted approach to destroy hard-to-reach tumors at the cellular level. Dr. Narayanan is a strong advocate for this minimally-invasive interventional radiology therapy, and he helped bring it to Sylvester with patients like Heather in mind.

“The advantages of NanoKnife are that it’s a lot less trying on your body, it allows the doctor to just target the cancer cells, and it leaves the rest of good functioning tissue alone, which allows your body to heal itself,” Heather says.

NanoKnife applies electrical energy directly into tumors, which opens the cell walls of the tumor, killing the cancer cells and sparing healthy tissue. Sylvester/UMHC was the first provider in Florida to offer this advanced technology.

Heather is grateful for the care she has received at Sylvester where she is “not just a number,” and she is especially thankful for the people who have supported and taken care of her along her journey.

“Sylvester will give as much as you need them to give,” she says. “I have the ability to act and be part of my own treatment plan. Every person I come in contact with is willing to stop what they’re doing and explain what is happening.”

Dr. Narayanan is grateful that he has had an opportunity to be a part of her care team.

“Heather’s story is one of sheer determination, courage, and human will,” Dr. Narayanan says. “Her positive outlook is a true inspiration for all of us.”

Rather than looking at her disease as a grim situation and letting it get her down, Heather has accepted cancer as a challenge that she can live with.

“It’s a simple question you ask yourself: life or death? Once you choose, you give it 150 percent.”

Since becoming one of the first patients to receive NanoKnife therapy at Sylvester, Heather has been treated three more times with this technology, and she continues to monitor and manage her disease with regular visits to the cancer center.

“I drive miles every week and month to get the care that I’m going to need in order to survive 15 years plus, and I don’t plan on leaving this world anytime soon.”