Cancer has limited Caroline Klein's tomorrows. Here's what she's doing about it
Sitting in her kitchen nook in her Salt Lake City home on a May morning, Caroline Klein describes her cancer diagnosis as ironic. Before it, she had always lived a healthy life and never had a cold or needed to use her health insurance.
That all changed in September 2022, six weeks after Klein moved to Utah to start a new, high-profile job as Smith Entertainment Group's chief communications officer.
First, one of her high heels began slipping off. Three days later, she couldn't pick up her foot.
She started tripping constantly as her foot would drag. An avid hiker and trail runner, Klein was confused.
Then she began feeling a 'very intense pain' from her right knee to the top of her foot. She decided to see a doctor.
Klein ultimately visited four doctors over the course of nine months.
The first thought her problems stemmed from back issues and bulging discs. She then saw another who did MRIs of her back, brain and nerves and thought she needed surgery to treat degenerative discs. The next doctor thought Klein had an autoimmune disease.
Finally, in June 2023, she met Dr. Mark Mahan at the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute. He suggested an MRI of her thigh, though her thigh wasn't in pain. That MRI led to the discovery of a small tumor on Klein's sciatic nerve.
Klein was told there was a 95% chance it was benign. But two months later, she went ahead with surgery to remove it — and all of her back and leg pain went with it.
'Everything was going great,' Klein said.
In her professional life, Klein had quickly become invaluable to Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith as she oversaw the Jazz's broadcasting, public relations and community relations efforts.
Personally, she was dating her boyfriend of nearly four and a half years, Mike Gartlan, and continuing to enjoy and explore her new home.
But two weeks after the surgery, on Sept. 6, 2023, Klein was sitting next to Gartlan on the chairlift at Sundance Resort when she noticed she had two missed calls.
Still on the chairlift, Klein received another call from Dr. Mahan. He told her the tumor had come back positive for proximal-type epithelioid sarcoma.
'I looked at Mike and I just said, 'So I have cancer,' and we both kind of looked at each other,' she said.
It was the opposite of the distraught reaction she'd imagined she would have.
'I was so calm about it because there was nothing that I could do in the moment. So to me, I handled it kind of like everything else. I was very practical,' she said.
The next month, Klein started 35 sessions of radiation on her right leg. She treated the sessions like any other appointment to help her continue to feel normal, going before and after work.
She finished radiation in December 2023 and her scans came back clean. The next step was to have MRIs every three months on her leg, abdomen, pelvis and chest.
Despite the clean scans, Klein, then 38, was told she only had a 50% chance to make it another two years.
'That was terrifying and so jarring in the moment,' she said.
After she went in for the first of those scans in February 2024, her doctor told her the cancer had spread to her lungs and was now terminal. She had one to nine years to live.
Three days later, Gartlan took Klein back to Sundance and proposed.
Knowing that tomorrow isn't guaranteed for anyone and that she'll have fewer tomorrows than she planned, Klein has been on a mission ever since her diagnosis to live the remainder of her life to its fullest.
'I took my terminal cancer diagnosis, and I saw it not as a death sentence, but a license to live,' she said. 'My terminal diagnosis does not mean that my life is over. It will be soon. We don't know when, but it gave me this refreshed attitude to just live every day like there might not be a tomorrow.'
Klein's cancer journey has coincided with her career reaching new heights. She's ushered SEG through one of its busiest chapters, helping it celebrate the Utah Jazz's 50th season and welcome an NHL team to Utah, the Utah Mammoth.
Both Ryan and Ashley Smith are full of praise for Klein, noting that her hard work and character are part of why they wanted to be involved in this story.
'I've never done an interview like this about someone at this level,' Ryan Smith said. 'The fact that we both can't wait to talk about CK, like, that's what it's about.'
Klein chose — and has been healthy enough — to continue working through her cancer, only taking time off for a vacation last October.
Even right before lung surgery, she was working from her hospital bed. She did the same during chemotherapy.
Klein said she never felt pressured by the Smiths to keep working. Rather, the decision was rooted in her love for and pride in her job and her need for normalcy.
She appreciates the Smiths' support, 'especially in helping me have the freedom to live my life and to pursue things that I won't be able to pursue when I get sicker, and that has meant everything,' she said.
Klein grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and studied journalism at Boston University. Prior to joining SEG almost three years ago, she spent the entirety of her career in the travel and hospitality industry.
In 2022, she sought a career pivot that would challenge her and teach her something new at an organization that 'used their platform for good and really affected a community,' she said.
She found that at SEG with the Smiths.
In hindsight, Klein admits she may have taken on too much 'new' at once as she learned a new industry and company in a new state. But that hasn't gotten in the way of her impressing her bosses.
'I dream that my daughters have the same confidence that she has, where she doesn't have all the answers and she's fine figuring it out,' Ryan Smith said.
Since her initial diagnosis, some of Klein's work accomplishments include leading a documentary project for the Jazz's 50th anniversary and launching Jazz+, the team's streaming service. She later helped expand Jazz+ to UtahHC+ to stream the Utah Hockey Club's inaugural season.
'Everything insanely hard that we've done since we've been in the sports world, Caroline's been a part of, and she's carried so much of the weight,' Ashley Smith said.
But according to the Smiths, Klein's greatest accomplishments at SEG are more intangible.
Ashley Smith is most impressed by the way Klein has showcased the people around her, championed women and cared about her personally.
Ryan Smith highlighted Klein's ability to build trust and 'get inside the brains of a bunch of people to get them to go do a job,' like she had to do with Jazz+ as she worked with and helped individuals within both the NBA and SEG to all be happy with the product.
'We're going to be coloring in the lines Caroline created for the next 20 or 30 years,' he said. 'She created the whole platform and she did it without a playbook in record time — and truly, something that, honestly, no one else had really done in sports."
Following her diagnosis, Klein's relationship with the Smiths became more than professional. They're now family.
When Klein told the Smiths that her cancer was terminal, the couple was heartbroken because Klein 'is literally just the entire package of everything you could want in a human and in an employee,' Ashley said.
'We were devastated for her. We were devastated with her, and we definitely felt helpless,' she said. 'I just remember feelings of like, 'This is very unfair,' because the best humans don't deserve that.'
Klein's commitment to live life to its fullest has inspired Ashley, who has adopted the phrase 'What would Caroline do?' as a sort of life motto.
'Somehow, she has strengthened me through this,' Ashley Smith said. 'You feel like you would be the one strengthening someone else who's navigating this. No, she's strengthening me and making me want to be better and have a better attitude and come at things in different ways.'
Klein knows her cancer journey isn't like most cancer journeys.
Her life post-diagnosis has been relatively normal, except for having more doctor appointments — and chemo — than the average person needs.
Following her terminal diagnosis, Klein did oral chemotherapy for eight months and experienced zero symptoms or side effects.
With her back pain finally gone, she felt like she was in better health than she was before cancer, and she was able to start hiking again.
'I really was able to live a very full life,' she said of that time. 'If it wasn't for my doctors appointments and having to remind myself to take my medication twice a day, there was no difference.'
During this time, she regularly traveled to Houston to meet with Dr. Ravin Ratan, a leading sarcoma oncologist and specialist in Klein's type of cancer, at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Klein was able to start seeing Dr. Ratan thanks to a connection made by then-Jazz sideline reporter and current in-game reporter, Holly Rowe.
Last October, scans revealed the tumors in Klein's lungs had grown significantly and that she would need to start chemotherapy again, canceling the three-month sabbatical she had planned. Instead, she and Gartlan went to Bhutan for two and a half weeks to hike Tiger's Nest, a four-mile round-trip hike to a 17th century monastery perched on a cliff over 10,000 feet above sea level.
Later that month, she learned she had qualified for a clinical trial at MD Anderson and could do that instead of chemotherapy.
She elected to do the trial and started it after her trip. The trial consisted of eight nights in the hospital and five infusions. It was briefly broken up by a quick trip to New York City for Klein to be honored as part of Sports Business Journal's 40 Under 40.
Upon the completion of the first phase of the trial, she flew back to Salt Lake a few days before Thanksgiving.
On Dec. 19, Klein returned to Houston to begin the next phase of her clinical trial. She expected that first meeting with Dr. Ratan to be a routine visit.
She was wrong.
Dr. Ratan told her the main tumor in her left lung had grown by 120% in six weeks and that she was no longer in the trial.
He gave her two options: palliative care or starting chemotherapy in Utah with her oncologist, Dr. Anna Chalmers, in the next five days.
Klein's cancer wasn't usually responsive to chemotherapy, but Dr. Ratan said they had to try.
She asked him, 'Am I going to make it to my 40th birthday? I've been chasing 40. I've been so excited to turn 40.'
Dr. Ratan said he couldn't make any promises, but they 'were going to try to get you as close as possible.'
That moment was her wake up call.
She shared the news with her family and two days later, her siblings had all flown out to Salt Lake to be with her.
Together, they attended a hockey game, but Klein said she was the sickest she had ever been. She was mostly confined to her couch, unable to eat and barely able to speak.
When it was time for her siblings to leave, they said what they thought would be their final goodbyes.
'That was my reality check of 'I am very ill.' That was the first time,' she said, 'that I realized that my time here is going to be shorter than I would like and that I am not always going to feel good and that I have to take advantage and be very conscious of every day I wake up feeling healthy and strong.'
She started chemotherapy a couple of days after her brothers left (her sister stayed through New Year's) on Christmas Eve.
But before she could do that, she learned that since her visit with Dr. Ratan less than a week prior, her tumor had grown so much that her left lung had collapsed.
She was put on oxygen as a result. She had a constant cough and was unable to sleep on her back or side. She couldn't walk a block without stopping.
As her health declined, Klein didn't fear death or believe her situation was sad, but she felt like she still had 'so much more to give,' she said.
During this time, Klein felt the love of her SEG family, who showed up to support her. Ashley Smith came to visit her at home multiple times. Instead of talking about work, they sat and worked on puzzles together.
'There aren't many other owners that I know of who would ... be that focused on me as a person and what I personally need versus what they need from me professionally,' she said.
When asked about those visits, Ashley Smith said that Klein leaves everyone around her feeling elevated to their best and that she has been humbled and inspired by the grace Klein has carried throughout her cancer journey.
'It's been important to me to spend time with her personally just because we're so astonished all the time, not only by how great she is in the office, but what a remarkable human she is in every other way,' she said. 'And then, I just wanted to spend time with her in that way, so maybe it was selfish is what I'm trying to say.'
Surprisingly, the chemotherapy quickly improved Klein's health. Though doctors didn't think it would work, 'it brought me back to life,' she said.
In between treatments the last year, Klein took time to work on her bucket list and make memories with her loved ones. As a result of her diagnosis, she's adopted two questions as her motto: 'Why not?' and 'Why wait?'
'None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. But I know that I'm not guaranteed into my 50s, right? There's a time limit for me,' she said.
Following the dive her health took in December and January, she now knows how sick she can get.
'I know I will get back there and I don't want to be back at that point thinking, 'Why didn't I do this?'' she said.
In the past year, Klein introduced her niece and nephews to her love of hiking in national parks with a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park. She also hiked with her mom in Sedona, Arizona.
She attended her first Olympics last summer, watching the U.S. men's soccer team's opening match against France in Marseille. She and Gartlan then traveled to Italy and hiked the Dolomites before heading back to Utah for their civil wedding in August.
Just over a week later, the couple traveled again, but this time to Porto, Portugal, where 78 of their closest family and friends, including the Smiths, joined them for their wedding.
Looking back, she's happy with how she spent the last year.
Now, life is back to normal for Klein. Earlier this month, she was able to accomplish something doctors were unsure of: She reached her 40th birthday.
'If someone didn't know what I was going through and if I wasn't bald, they would have no idea (I have cancer),' she said.
But Klein knows life can change in an instant, which makes waiting for her next scans in June 'the hardest thing,' she said. Those scans will determine what her life will look like for another month.
'The next scan could show that I need to start chemotherapy again or the next scan could show that I'm clear for another 30 days,' she said.
Klein described it as living in 30-day windows, trying to decide how she's going to make each month 'big' or the 'best month.'
For now, she is 'embracing the summer' and the offseason by prioritizing time with the people she loves and visiting the places she's always wanted to visit.
Before her June scans, she and her husband will travel to Botswana and South Africa to unplug. Then, she'll visit her family in Milwaukee for the Fourth of July.
'Nothing about my situation is sad to me, but I want to make sure that when I'm gone, I've left people with a lot of great memories that bring them joy, too,' she said.
Klein hopes people don't need a wake up call to live their lives more fully, but she's happy if her story can serve that purpose.
'I personally don't think my story is anything special. I hope that people don't need a story like mine to be living life the way they want to or the way that would bring them a lot of joy. But again, if there's one good thing that can come out of this, then that makes me happy.'
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