CHAMOIS — At Friday’s home volleyball match against New Haven, the Lady Pirates presented proceeds from a t-shirt fundraiser to Chamois resident Yvonne “Jo” Reed, 45, who, exactly a year before, was in the Capital Region ICU fighting for her life against a form of cancer not typically seen in someone her age.

“I think it’s amazing that they thought of me because there are so many other people that could use the money, too,” she said. “It’s going to help.”

Fundraising organizer Dawna Keilholz explained the volleyball players chose Jo because she’s a Chamois High graduate, and her daughter attends elementary school at R-1. “The girls wanted to show their support for Jo as she continues in her fight with this rare cancer,” said Keilholz. “It’s amazing to see how the girls came together to help someone close to home.”

Team members are senior Savanah Sieg, juniors Brieanna Keilholz, Emma Mehmert, and Kayla Wigglesworth, sophomores Raigen Cramer and Nora Wideman, and freshman Carly Schollmeyer.

Keilholz provided the Lady Pirates with a list of community members who have been affected by cancer, including those currently in treatment, along with local organizations. After they selected Reed, Keilholz continued a two-year partnership with Bugs Ink, owned by Matt Shockley of Chamois, to have the shirts made. “Matt generously prints the shirts at his cost,” said Keilholz, adding that all proceeds went to Reed. “I gave the girls a few design options to choose from, and they look great.”

Reed sat with family to watch the Lady Pirates, resplendent in pink jerseys, battle New Haven, while several people in the gym wore the special shirts made for the occasion. A year ago, that scenario didn’t seem likely.

It was Oct. 10, 2024, when her world shifted dramatically. “I went in with pneumococcal pneumonia in my right lung,” said Reed, who  Friday’s volleyball contest. “I was septic. I had blood clots in my lungs. I went into renal failure, and then they said that there were lesions on my spine and pelvis that were possibly cancer.”

Reed was on a vent, with an uncertain prognosis as doctors worked to figure out what had happened.

About 15 days later, doctors conducted a bone marrow biopsy.

After about a month in the hospital, Reed was released, but was rushed back on Nov. 13 with pneumonia in her left lung, and once again, septic. She stayed there another week.

Doctors diagnosed her with multiple myeloma, also called Kahler’s disease, a cancer of the bone marrow that involves the uncontrolled growth of malignant plasma cells, which normally produce antibodies to fight infection. “I had no clue it was cancer,” said Reed. “There’s no history of cancer in my family, but this type isn’t hereditary. It just shows up. It’s not something that runs in the family or get your kids genetically tested, like they do for certain cancers.”

While multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer in the United States, it typically afflicts elderly patients following a bone break. “A lot of cancers are environmental, like leukemia, and you could blame the environment, but this one just shows up,” said Reed. “There’s no warning to it, and most of the time, it’s mostly people 65 and older, and a lot of times that’s because of them breaking a bone, you know, and they see lesions on the bones from the cancer, because it’s in the bone marrow.”

Reed’s biopsy showed that 90% of her bone marrow was affected by the cancer.

She remembers the day leading to the discovery. A 20-year veteran of the Missouri Department of Corrections, Capt. Reed works as a security specialist in the security unit at the Central Office. She was with her boss, conducting an audit at Vandalia.

The first day of the two-day audit went fine, but the next morning, Reed couldn’t move. “I was hurting so bad, and I was just sick,” she said. “My eardrum had ruptured that night. I texted my boss, and she came to my room.”

Reed asked for help putting the room back together, but her boss wasn’t having it. “She went down to the desk and extended my stay until two o’clock,” she said. “When she came back from the audit, she helped me get things together and down to the car. It took 45 minutes to get me from my hotel room to her van to get me to the hospital. “I thought I had vertigo because of the busted eardrum, but I was septic, and my blood pressure wasn’t sustaining my limbs to walk.”

When Reed checked in at Capital Region, nurses couldn’t read her blood pressure. That triggered an immediate escalation, and Reed was taken straight back for treatment. Her pulse oxygen was in the 80s, and blood pressure, when finally recorded, was 70/40.

Reed’s family, meanwhile, had no idea how serious it was in the hospital. “My wife brought my son up because my truck was at my boss’s house,” she said of Debra and her son, Dawson Haslag, 23. “The only thing my wife knew was that I was going to the ER with a busted eardrum. We didn’t know that it was as severe as it was, but we found out very quickly.”

Doctors discovered the lesions on her spine, but she still had not received confirmation about cancer, so she kept the rest of her family in the dark. “I didn’t want to stir my family up thinking I got cancer if we didn’t really know,” Reed explained. “I’ve had back problems since I was probably 22, and been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, so my back has always hurt. That was nothing new.”

Doctors ran every test they could, including every tick disease and others, in an effort to diagnose the situation. “They ended up diagnosing me with pneumococcal pneumonia and sepsis, and all that stuff,” said Reed. “When they finally found out it was multiple myeloma, everything fell into place as to why I was so sick, because it basically crashed my immune system.”

Debra stayed with Jo almost the entire time she was in the hospital. Once, while Reed and her aunt, Cindy, were Jeep shopping online in the hospital room, things got scary. “I kept telling her I couldn’t breathe, and I kept coughing,” said Reed. “The next thing I know, I woke up three days later back on the vent. I got a mucus plug hung up while I was on the vent, and I thought I was gonna die. That was scary to me because I couldn’t breathe.”

Reed said she was close to death many times. “If I were a cat, I don’t know how many of those nine lives I’ve been through, but it’s been a few,” she quipped.

After being released from Capital Region the second time, Reed went to Goldschmidt Cancer Center in Jefferson City for treatment.

One chemo shot cost a staggering $60,000 and was only covered by insurance as an outpatient procedure. Reed also had to worry about allergic reactions. “I had to take Benadryl and all this other premed stuff before, and then they had to watch me for six or eight hours,” she said, staying at Goldschmidt all day.

Doctors administered Melphalan (brand names Alkeran and Evomela), a chemotherapy medication used to treat certain cancers, most notably multiple myeloma. It is a powerful cytotoxic agent that works by interfering with the growth of cancer cells, a process called alkylation. Notably, the chemo treatment impacts immunity. “It wipes the whole immune system,” she said. “I don’t have a vaccine in my body from birth until now. I’ll have to get my vaccines redone, even the ones from birth, in about six months.”

Later, doctors performed another biopsy to see where things stood about 30 days ahead of a scheduled stem-cell transplant. “It showed no traces of the multiple myeloma whatsoever, so the doctor said that at that point, we could say that I was in complete remission,” said Reed. “We still did the transplant with my own stem cells.

Over a four-day regimen, Reed took shots to boost the stem cells in her bone marrow, with a goal of collecting eight million cells. Doctors only had 7.5 million to work with, but that was well above the six million necessary to complete the procedure. “I’ve got enough to do another stem cell transplant if I wish to, but I don’t know if I want to do it again because I felt like it almost killed me the first time,” said Reed.

She was admitted to University Hospital at MU, but it wasn’t easy. “They went back and forth,” said Reed. “They didn’t want to put another PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) in because I’m on dialysis, and my veins are so bad that they didn’t want to tear them up, just in case I wanted a fistula, which is how people do dialysis most of the time. I’d like to be off dialysis, which was another reason we did the stem cell transplant, to hopefully jump-start my kidneys. I make urine, but my kidneys don’t filter because of the M proteins from the multiple myeloma; they clog them up. That’s why I went into renal failure.”

Doctors performed the stem cell transplant through an IV line in Reed’s neck. “The stem cells they harvested were frozen, and later, they didn’t want them to get too warm because they start to die,” she explained.

Following the transplant, Reed is hopeful the next biopsy will show her bone marrow to be free of cancer.

“We’ll go from there, and it should still say that I’m still in remission,” said Reed. “I would hope so, anyway. From there, we’ll do maintenance drugs because this cancer doesn’t ever go away. We’ve just got to keep it in remission.”

Unfortunately, like the disease itself, there are no triggers Reed can avoid to prevent another flare-up.

Reed is currently receiving dialysis treatment twice a week instead of three.

Through it all, she never lost her positive attitude. “If you let it get to you, it’s gonna win,” said Reed, who grew up in the Catholic faith and believes that played a role. “I’ve prayed, but I also believe that if you don’t have a positive attitude, it won’t go well. You’ve just got to stay strong, be positive, and know that it’s not going to beat you.”

Reed noted that while she has savings, the fundraising donation was helpful because she recently used up the last of her paid time off at work. “I’m not going to be getting a full paycheck,” she noted, adding she has been able to work from home a few hours a day. “That money is going to help me not dip into my savings.”