Glenwood Teen Turns Cancer Struggle Into Pursuit of Nursing Career

Kelsey Adams was 13 years old when she began her first fight against cancer.

“Whenever I was younger,my stomach was very large – extended – and we just thought it was normal, because we, I mean, doctor appointments, regular pediatrician, they said, ‘Everything’s okay, everything’s good,’” said Kelsey. “And it was that way until I was 13, but one night it got so bad that I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t walk, I could hardly even talk.”

At first, Kelsey and her family assumed the pain was due to a pulled muscle and attempted to treat it with heating pads and ibuprofen. However, the pain persisted, coming to a head at 4:00 a.m. one morning with Kelsey insisting on a visit to the emergency room.

“I told her, I said, ‘Mama, something’s wrong with me,’” said Kelsey.

Medical professionals performed blood tests and a CT scan to diagnose the cause of Kelsey’s pain: a solid pseudopapillary tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer. 

Learning she had developed cancer at 13 dealt a heavy blow to Kelsey’s mindset. She was a homeschooled native of Glenwood with a love for music, animals and football; learning she had developed pancreatic cancer made her feel as if her life as she knew it had come to an end.

“I just started middle school, so it was like I had all this stuff to look forward to,” said Kelsey. “And, you know, it just happened out of the blue, so honestly, it was sort of like my whole life just came crashing down. And I was like, ‘This is over. This is it. There’s nothing else I can do.’”

The doctors suggested a laparoscopic surgery to remove the tumor, a kind of abdominal surgery which is often minimally invasive. However, when Kelsey went in for the operation on December 23, 2019, the surgeons realized they had underestimated the size of the tumor.

Initial estimates showed the tumor’s size at approximately seven centimeters in diameter, but in reality, the tumor was much larger, had spread to Kelsey’s colon and spleen and was pressing against her spinal cord.

“They said that it was actually pushing up against my spinal cord,” said Kelsey. “That’s what was causing all the pain.”

Rather than the laparoscopic surgery, the surgeons had to make a large incision from the top of her stomach to her belly button to remove half her pancreas, her spleen, and resect one foot of her colon. 

Kelsey spent a week in the hospital recovering from her surgery. However, while the tumor was gone, her recovery would see a number of setbacks and complications.

First, she returned to the hospital one week after her discharge due to a fever and inability to eat. The cause was an abscess where her spleen had been, as well as a reopening of her colon due to the nature of the surgery.

Kelsey had to receive two more tubes into her torso to resolve the issue, in addition to a tube she already had from the initial operation. One of the tubes was located under her diaphragm, which led to an issue when the time came for its removal.

“Whenever they went to go pull that one up, up under my diaphragm, I felt something pop,” said Kelsey.

Afterward, Kelsey was extremely weak and out of breath, and said she looked “like a 110 year old person.” When she tried to take a shower with her mother’s assistance, she turned pale and temporarily passed out.

Despite their doctor’s claim the weakness was normal for children who had experienced major surgeries, the weakness persisted through the next few days. Another doctor’s appointment and an x-ray determined the problems: her lung was attempting to collapse in addition to a type of blood clot known as a pulmonary embolism.

Kelsey required another surgery and a chest tube, as well as blood thinners for the subsequent three to four months. However, these measures finally restored a sense of normalcy to Kelsey and her family, as ultrasounds showed no causes for concern.

“After that, it was about as normal as you guess you could say, you know?” said Kelsey. “We were all good. We went back, we had scans. They said it was clear.”

This normalcy would continue until Kelsey was 17, when she noticed the upper part of her stomach was larger than the rest of her stomach. Kelsey and her family initially assumed the size difference was due to scar tissue caused by the number of surgeries she undertook. However, when attending theatre practice, she noticed liquid leaking out of her belly button.

“It was green, it had this foul smell, it was horrible,” said Kelsey. 

After a visit to urgent care that same evening, Kelsey underwent another CT scan while doctors ran a culture on the liquid. The results showed lesions had formed on her liver, formed from the spread of the previous cancer. 

Kelsey was transferred to the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta for care, where they confirmed her cancer had returned and was growing faster than anticipated. 

“My type of cancer, it’s not really supposed to grow fast… but after that scan, they said it had grown three centimeters,” said Kelsey.

Doctors at Children’s spent two months developing a treatment plan for her involving chemotherapy and Yttrium-90 treatment, which she began in October of 2024. During her treatment, Kelsey experienced issues sleeping due to the pain she was in, as the chemotherapy was inflaming her liver.

“I had a complication to where I was waking up, screaming, crying, because I was in a lot of pain again,” said Kelsey.

With chemotherapy only inflaming her kidney, doctors placed her on a waiting list for a liver transplant in February 2025. However, when they spoke to Dr. Bhargava Mullapudi, a liver transplant specialist, he suggested an alternative procedure as a potential solution. 

“He said, ‘I want to cut off as much of your liver as possible, but leave you with enough, that way you survive,’” said Kelsey.

The operation, performed on April 2, 2025, saw Dr. Mullapudi, alongside Dr. Richard Henrickson, remove all but 20 percent of Kelsey’s liver, just enough to allow her liver to function without failure. They also removed her gallbladder.

While the first three days after the surgery were painful, with Kelsey initially needing an epidural to manage the pain, the operation was a success. Her subsequent scans were clear, and she recovered in time to walk for her high school graduation. She has reported no similar health issues since.

Both Kelsey and her doctors attribute her resiliency during her illnesses to the positive mindset she developed throughout the many surgeries and complications.

“They think that helped too, because I was just like, ‘It’s okay,’” said Kelsey. “You know, because I kept having some setbacks, and I’m like, ‘It’s okay. It’s going to be fine. It’ll be okay. It’ll work out like it’s supposed to, you know? I’m just here to go along for the ride.’”

Kelsey’s cancer also put her and her family into contact with other families dealing with similar struggles, forming bonds through their shared experience.

“We met so many wonderful people who had it worse than us and that we could be a light for at the same time,” said Allison Adams, Kelsey’s mother. “At the Ronald McDonald House, at the hospital, and people who have lost their children, we were able to cry together. Didn’t even speak the same language, we [were] sitting there crying together.”

Now, on the other side of her battle with cancer, Kelsey is attending Vidalia’s Southeastern Technical College in pursuit of a nursing degree. Nursing has always been a career of choice for her, along with veterinarian, but her bout with cancer solidified her decision to pursue a nursing degree.

“It’s always been my dream, which I always knew I wanted to help people… but then whenever I went through all my everything with, you know, cancer and all that, really just seeing all the other nurses and everything, and how they were there for me, and the care they gave for me, it really solidified my choice to want to be a nurse,” said Kelsey.

Kelsey has completed her pre-requisites with the help of dual enrollment courses in high school and is now studying for her TEAS exam in the spring. Should she pass, she will begin her nursing education in earnest next fall.

Her aim in nursing is to be “a light for other people, regardless if that’s just adults or if that’s kids.”

“Just being able to be there for them in, like, some of their darkest moments, you know?” said Kelsey.