The article below was written by the aunt of my PCP. It is such a beautiful, fitting, yet heartbreaking tribute. This is the grace filled journey of Dr. C.
Chelsea Boet just marked her 37th birthday. It turned out to be her last.
By Julie Mack | jmack1@mlive.com
This was supposed to be a story about how Dr. Chelsea Boet intended to spend the last months of her life.
Chelsea was my niece and a Grand Rapids primary-care physician with a husband and two young children. In 2018, she was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer.
I wrote about Chelsea for MLive shortly after she was diagnosed. A few weeks ago, after Chelsea stopped chemotherapy treatments, she agreed to let me update her story. She and her doctors anticipated she had a few months left.
A young mother had a ‘perfect’ life. Then came the deadly cancer diagnosis
I wrote that story. Friday night, Chelsea signed off on the fact-checking and I let my editor know the story was good to go.
Hours later, Chelsea went to the hospital, struggling to breathe. It was one of many unplanned emergency trips she’s made in the past two and a half years.
But this time was different. “Not good,” texted my sister Marcia Cunliffe, who is Chelsea’s mom. “This is it.”
Chelsea made it home Saturday morning so she could be surrounded by her family. She died hours later.
It was a shockingly abrupt ending to a drawn-out nightmare.
But, it should be made clear, the past 32 months also have included a lot of joy, a lot of memories, a lot of Chelsea making the very most of her time with her husband Peter; their children, Lillian, who is 5, and Oliver, who is 2, and all her family and friends.
There was, for instance, her 37th birthday on Oct. 29, less than three weeks ago.
That week included a Zoom call with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. A hot-air balloon ride over Kent County. A family dinner where Marcia made a favorite dish from childhood, and Lillian and Oliver offered hugs and kisses.
Chelsea cried that day, she told me later, knowing it was very likely her last birthday. But it was a good birthday, too.
She loved being surrounded by her family and eating, as she put it, “yummy yummy food.” She loved the Zoom call with the extended family, and made it clear that it was an occasion for birthday wishes, not good-byes. “Nobody be morbid,” she told the group.
She loved that her birthday was the same day Lillian’s kindergarten class had a Halloween party, and so Chelsea got to see her daughter’s excitement about that.
The next week, I had lunch with Chelsea on Election Day, one of the milestone events on her calendar. “In September, I didn’t know if I’d make it,” she said. When Joe Biden was announced the winner, she texted me a photo of her and Pete with glasses of non-alcoholic champagne. “Popped the Biden bubbly!” she wrote.
We talked about her plans for the upcoming weeks. A trip to northern Michigan with extended family. Her virtual retirement party, now that it was clear she wouldn’t be returning to work as a primary-care physician at Spectrum’s Grandville medical office. Thanksgiving.
“For me, the most important thing is making as many memories as I can get my paws on,” she said.
The balloon ride -- a birthday gift from family friends -- was among those memories. Because Peter is afraid of heights, Chelsea went with Marcia, and the two floated over southwest Kent County for an hour.
“It brought me to tears, for sure,” Chelsea said. “Just, like, how gorgeous our world is and how beautiful this life is, and how I’m not ready to leave it.”
A horrifying diagnosis
“Devastated" was the term that Marcia used Saturday to describe Chelsea’s passing.
It was, I recalled, the same word Marcia used in March 2018 when Chelsea was first diagnosed.
That diagnosis came only two months after Oliver was born. Chelsea went to her primary-care doctor to check on abdominal pains that weren’t getting better. An ultrasound showed large masses in her liver.
Initially, Chelsea was told it was likely benign tumors caused by high estrogen levels. But within days, more tests revealed the horrifying truth: Colon cancer that had spread to the liver, with too many tumors in the liver to count.
Colon cancer is rising among younger adults, and nobody knows why
The prognosis was grim. But Chelsea and her doctors used every trick in the book to prolong her life. Different chemo combinations. A pump was surgically installed in her liver to allowed more concentrated chemo. Radioactive beads were embedded in the tumor.
In May 2019, surgeons took out 60% of her liver, a Hail Mary pass that was her only chance at a cure. It was a risky operation that proved much more difficult than expected. Chelsea almost died on the table. And the worst part was the surgeons couldn’t remove all tumors, dashing hopes that Chelsea could put cancer behind her.
After that operation, it seemed very much a process of one step forward and two steps back. When the medical team recommended stopping treatments last month, Chelsea wasn’t surprised. Her liver function steadily deteriorated. Chemotherapy was making it worse, plus her cancer had mutated and the chemo was no longer working.
“Everyone knew it was coming, because I was just not doing as well," she said a week after the decision. “I wasn’t tolerating chemo as well. Psychologically, I wasn’t doing as well. So people knew it was coming; it’s just the timing. There’s never a good time to decide to do this.”
The brutal fact, Chelsea said, “I think that I’ve outlived everybody’s expectations by quite some time, considering how sick I was when I was diagnosed."
She praised her medical team for buying her invaluable time. In the past two and a half years, Chelsea was able to return to work part time. She and Peter took several trips, including one to New York for Peter’s 40th birthday and a family visit to Disney World that included her parents and siblings. She was able to see the birth of her brother’s baby last year, the wedding of a younger sister in July, a couple more Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.
Most importantly, Chelsea gained time with her children.
Oliver, who was a newborn when his mother was diagnosed, will turn 3 in January. Chelsea was able to see him learn to walk, learn to talk, tackle potty training, go from a child fearful of water to one who loves to swim. He’s now a cheerful 2-year-old who recently declared onions are his favorite food.
Lillian had just turned 3 when Chelsea became sick. She’s now a spirited 5-year-old who started kindergarten in September, an event Chelsea was thrilled to witness.
Chelsea’s fervent hope was to have one more round of holiday celebrations and children’s birthdays. After she stopped chemo in mid-October, the anticipation was that she still had several months left.
She was keeping her fingers crossed, she told me.
“We’ve got Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. And then my son’s birthday is right after Christmas and then my daughter’s birthday right after that,” she said. "I want to see each of them, and I don’t know that I’m going to be able to.”
Leaving a legacy
A small silver lining of her illness was that it brought Chelsea closer to her parents and siblings, all of whom have made major life changes as a result of the cancer diagnosis.
Marcia, a nurse for four decades at Bronson Methodist Hospital, retired this summer to help Chelsea and her family. Ron, Chelsea’s father, also has helped enormously with the children, as have Chelsea’s in-laws, Jack and Valerie Boet, who live in Grand Haven.
In May, Chelsea’s brother and his wife, Shane and Katie Cunliffe, moved from Milwaukee to Grand Rapids, in part to be closer to Chelsea. One of Chelsea’s sisters, Cailey Cunliffe, moved into the Boets' guest bedroom and has been working remotely from their house. Her other sister, Cara Herman, moved up her wedding to ensure Chelsea could be there.
“I have the very, very best family, people who are making such huge sacrifices to make this as painless as possible for my kids, and keep that consistency for my kids," Chelsea said.
Still, she worried about the kids and she worried about Peter.
“It’s not just the kids going through this horrible transition,” Chelsea said. “It’s also my husband, and I would imagine it’s the hardest for him. It’s just the heaviest burden.”
Chelsea tried to lay the groundwork for life for her family for what comes next. She inscribed a number of children’s books to the future nieces and nephews that she’ll never meet. She wrote inscriptions in books for her own children, as well as making a number of videos and tape-recordings.
“I’ve recorded a number of mom notes," she told me. “I did one for puberty and about mean girls and the role of kindness, especially when you get to middle school and high school. I did one of their wedding days, and the day their first baby is born. You know, the days I need to be there. Things that I, as a mom, should be the one handling and giving advice, whether or not they want to hear it."
She told Peter and her family members that she wants life to go on.
“Life is going to keep rolling for everybody, and that’s good,” she said in what turned out to be our last in-person conversation.
But for now, grief has overtaken Chelsea’s family and friends. Saturday night and through Sunday, the memories and the tributes poured in on social media. People referenced her razor-sharp intelligence. Her wicked sense of humor. Her fierce devotion to her children and Pete. Her skills as a doctor. Her beautiful smile.
I have my own memories, especially from recent years when the two of us met frequently for lunch, and I provided a steady stream of casserole dinners. My own kids joked their cousin had become my favorite child.
Damn, I am going to her miss her. We all will.
**Personal Note: Dr. Chelsea was caring, funny, down to earth, and a knowledgeable physician. She took me to task when I needed it.....she eased my anxiousness anytime I had a procedure.... we prayed & she always hugged me at the end of each visit!! She was hardworking and dedicated, even until the end!! Her tenacity to carry on & to work for as long as she could was far beyond the stamina of the average person. Her greatest desire was to live long enough for her children to know & remember her!! I believe she accomplished that and MORE!! ~DPB
