About a week after her 25th birthday, Keri Cronin received a shocking diagnosis: She had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
She completed her second year of medical school while undergoing chemotherapy.
“I would sit in my wheelchair with hair falling out of my head as I took my exams,” she said.
Cronin, 28, faced a series of setbacks and challenges during her year of treatment and recovery. She is relieved to now be in remission, and in a huge triumph, graduated from medical school last week.
“It’s hard enough to graduate med school; it’s hard enough to beat cancer,” said Cronin. “Having done them at the same time was definitely a unique challenge.”
Now she has her sights on her next goal: becoming an oncologist to help other cancer patients like herself.
When Cronin was diagnosed with cancer, it wasn’t her first time facing a serious illness. From age 8 to 16, she suffered from granulomatosis with polyangiitis, a rare blood vessel disorder that causes inflammation in various organs.
Although she was a very active child, when she reached third grade, her health took a sudden turn.
“I was just so weak, and I wasn’t able to get up and move,” Cronin said, adding that she was prescribed an oral chemotherapy and a high dose of steroids for several years. “I wasn’t able to run around like a normal kid.”
Medication helped resolve her disorder, but the side effects — including severe facial swelling — made her self-conscious as a middle-schooler. Plus, she couldn’t participate in her favorite sports, field hockey and basketball.
“I was going through something so isolating, and not looking or feeling like myself,” Cronin said.
By the time she was 16, her condition had improved, and she was able to get off medication and live a normal life. She decided then that she wanted to become a doctor.
“I really learned at a young age how much of a difference a doctor can make in a person’s life,” Cronin said, adding that she had originally planned to go into pediatrics.
Cronin — an athlete and runner — moved through her high school and college years as a healthy person. Then in January 2021, she started experiencing several strange symptoms: sharp abdominal pain, weakness in her right leg, small lumps on her stomach. For several months, she said, “no one could figure out what was going on.”
She woke up on her 25th birthday and was unable to walk. A cat scan revealed she had an aggressive cancer spreading in her body.
Cronin isn’t sure whether her cancer was linked to the blood vessel disorder she had as a child.
“No one really knows,” she said, noting that the immunosuppressants she was on for years may have contributed. “It could just be really bad luck, or they are linked.”
Although Cronin was devastated by her diagnosis, she said she was grateful that she finally had clarity about what was going on with her body.
She started treatment right away, which included six cycles of chemotherapy. Doctors warned her that she couldn’t delay chemo, Cronin said, which meant she didn’t have time to freeze her eggs for her future fertility — another harsh blow.
“It’s something that’s very tough to live with,” Cronin said.
After about two months of chemotherapy, she took a year off from school to recuperate, and learn how to walk again — which took about seven months. In that time, she joined several peer mentorship programs to guide other young cancer patients through the experience.
“It’s just so rewarding,” Cronin said. “I really liked helping them navigate the journey.”
Working with cancer patients prompted her to pivot her focus from pediatrics to oncology.
“It really clicked,” she said. “I know what they’re feeling, and I know what they’re going through.”
Cronin resumed medical school in July 2022, and gradually got back to living an active lifestyle. She ran 54 miles in January to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and on May 5, she competed in the Independence Blue Cross Broad Street Run in Philadelphia. It was Cronin’s first time running the race since 2019, and she beat her previous time. The 10-mile race marked the third-year anniversary of her starting chemo.
“She’s a very, very resilient person,” said John McGeehan, a professor of clinical medicine at Cooper Medical School. He met Cronin in her second year, before her diagnosis. “She’s just an amazing human being.”
What separates a good doctor from a great doctor, McGeehan said, is empathy.
“She has a tool that nobody has. She’s going to be great because she’s normally empathetic, but now she is beyond that,” he said. “I think she’s going to be very, very special.”
“You can read about things and talk to people, but unless you’ve walked the road yourself, you don’t know. She’s going to really know what these people are going through,” McGeehan said.
Particularly as cancer rates among young people are rising, Cronin believes her experience will help her guide her future patients.
“No one really talks about what it is to enter survivorship,” she said. “There’s such a need to support survivors into adulthood.”
In July, Cronin will start her internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Morningside and West in Manhattan. After three years of internal medicine, she hopes to transition to an oncology fellowship.
“To be in this stage within three years of treatment, I’m very proud of myself,” Cronin said.
“It’s been such a long road getting here. The dream is real now.”
