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Fateful urgent care find leads to ovarian cancer diagnosis
A sharp physician at a Northwell GoHealth clinic picked up on Joy Grasso-Krebs' ovarian cancer symptoms — and put her on the path to lifesaving treatment
The pain took Joy Grasso-Krebs’s breath away. Last June, the high school chemistry teacher was in her classroom putting her laptop away when she felt it: a knife-like sensation in her groin.
The 53-year-old from Bayville gasped. “Even my students were like, ‘Are you OK?,’” she recalls.
For weeks, she’d been experiencing intermittent pressure, bloating and lower right-side abdominal pain. The veteran teacher chalked the pain up to a pulled muscle, and didn’t think much more of it.
But when the pain struck again, at school, Grasso-Krebs started to worry. Noting how uncomfortable she was, her colleagues told her to go see a doctor right away. So Grasso-Krebs drove straight to Northwell’s GoHealth urgent care in Glen Cove, a few minutes away from her home.
Grasso-Krebs looked pale when she walked in, physician assistant (PA) Mazalet Hassid remembers. When Hassid pressed her lower abdomen, the teacher winced.
Hassid was troubled. Grasso-Krebs appeared to be in severe discomfort. “Abdominal pain is one of those vague symptoms that make a diagnosis difficult without further imaging,” she says. Often such pain can point to uncomfortable but harmless conditions such as trapped gas or constipation — but sometimes it can indicate a more serious problem such as diverticulitis, appendicitis, sepsis or some other disease.
The urgent care didn’t have imaging equipment onsite, so Hassid decided it best to send Grasso-Krebs to the hospital. “I told her she needed more tests to make sure nothing life-threatening was going on,” she says.
Hassid referred Grasso-Krebs to Glen Cove Hospital for further care, and placed a call to the emergency department (ED) to let staff know she was heading over.
Within a half hour of her arrival, Grasso-Krebs received her scan — and then, not much later, harrowing news: Grasso-Krebs had large tumors on her ovaries. It was likely she had cancer.
Blindsided by ovarian cancer
There was no time to waste, Grasso-Krebs’ gynecologist told her the next day. That was on a Friday; by 7:30 Monday morning, Grasso-Krebs was seated in the office of Northwell gynecologic oncology surgeon Karin Kuan-Hui Shih, MD.
Dr. Shih explained the situation. It appeared Grasso-Krebs had ovarian cancer, a disease that can be deadly if not found and treated early. It would be imperative to remove as much of it as possible via surgery, and treat any cancer cells circulating in her body with powerful chemotherapy.
Follow-up bloodwork underscored the urgency of the situation. Grasso-Krebs had elevated levels of CA 125, a marker for ovarian cancer.
Glen Cove Hospital Cancer Prehabilitation Program
For patients facing the challenges of cancer treatment, prehabilitation may help them recover faster and stronger.
Grasso-Krebs had had her uterus and cervix taken out years prior to treat benign fibroids, a condition completely unrelated to her cancer; now, surgeons would need to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. Tests on the excised tissue would help Grasso-Krebs’ care team plan the rest of her treatment.
The news felt surreal, too terrifying to be true. No one in Grasso-Krebs’s family had ever had ovarian cancer. She’d only recently had her annual gynecology exam, and received a clean bill of health. “I was in shock,” Grasso-Krebs says. “Blindsided.”
Immediately she thought of her husband, Michael Krebs, 66, a New York City general superintendent for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and their daughter, Julia, 28, a mental health counselor based in North Carolina. Julia was scheduled to be married in just a few months’ time. Grasso-Krebs worried her treatment would interfere with her daughter’s plans — or that she might not be able to attend the wedding.
“All I could think was, ‘How am I going to manage this? How will this impact my family?’” she says.
Finding omentum cancer during treatment
Within two weeks of her diagnosis, Grasso-Krebs was scheduled for surgery. During the procedure, Dr. Shih also found and removed omentum cancer, affecting the fatty tissue that connects the stomach and other abdominal organs.
In July, she began chemotherapy at Northwell’s R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Center in New Hyde Park. Veena John, MD, Northwell’s system head for gynecologic medical oncology, oversaw her treatment: six rounds of two potent medications, administered intravenously. The infusions were once every three weeks, and lasted for seven to eight hours at a time.
Drs. Shih and John had explained to Grasso-Krebs what to expect during chemo; she would likely feel lousy for a few days after each chemo session, they said. And she would lose her hair.
By her second round, Grasso-Krebs’ hair was coming out in clumps. During a visit to North Carolina, she asked her daughter to shave her head.
Grasso-Krebs did her best to take the changes in stride.
“I knew it was temporary,” she says. “If my hair was falling out, I knew the chemo was working, killing those cells. I had to accept it.”
Surrounded by support during chemo
Loved ones rallied around Grasso-Krebs in ways both large and small. To accommodate her mother’s treatment, Julia postponed her October 2022 wedding for a whole year — a move that brought Grasso-Krebs to tears. “I need you there,” Julia told her.
The treatments were grueling, but love came from all directions. Grasso-Krebs’ husband accompanied her to every appointment, and nursed her afterward as she coped with severe bone pain, constipation and fatigue. “He was able to take time off to stay home with me,” she says, “and was my biggest support.”
Grasso-Krebs took to calling the colleagues who convinced her to go to urgent care ahead of her diagnosis her “angels”; they and other friends and coworkers sent care package after care package. Her students, too, boosted her spirits. “They sent me a basket with socks, Aquaphor and my favorite snacks,” she says. “I got so many cards. I was so moved.”
Once-a-week sessions with a mental health counselor helped Grasso-Krebs weather the emotional highs and lows of her treatment. Assistance from the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC), a nonprofit advocacy group, made a difference, too; the group sent meals every week, and also, crucially, put her in touch with survivors who could answer her questions.
Their support was indispensable, she says: “They helped prepare me to face this disease head on. You have to go through a cycle of grief, but if you don’t go through acceptance, you can’t launch forward.”
Thanking her heroes
Throughout her treatment, Grasso-Krebs periodically thought about Hassid, the PA at the Glen Cove Northwell GoHealth who put her on a path to lifesaving treatment.
Hassid, too, wondered how her former patient was faring. “I remember calling Joy a few days after she came into urgent care, and her telling me that they found a mass,” Hassid says. “In that same phone call, she had said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be alright.’”
“I remember thinking how brave Joy was,” Hassid says. “She had a positive outlook from the start.”
On November 7, 2022, Grasso-Krebs wrapped up her final chemotherapy session. At R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Center, patients ring a bell to celebrate the moment. As the bell clanged, Grasso-Krebs felt weak in the knees, overcome with emotion; staffers gathered around her to applaud and cheer. “If you saw the way they clapped for me — I was so glad I made it,” she says. “It’s like you accomplish something — your body is strong and has been good to you.”
Grasso-Krebs is now taking a PARP inhibitor, a medication that blocks the action of a key enzyme involved in helping cancer cells repair themselves. With the help of consistent exercise, a nutritious diet and other healthy lifestyle tweaks, she’s slowly regained strength. “I have a strict bedtime — 8:30 to 9pm every night,” she says.
Last summer, to celebrate how far she’s come, Grasso-Krebs and her family traveled to Utah. After a tough but beautiful hike in the famed Arches National Park, in Moab, Grasso-Krebs opened her arms wide in triumph, marveling at what she was able to do. “It was like, ‘Hey, you kicked ass, Krebs,’” she says. “I climbed this mountain, I got to the top.”
In September, Grasso-Krebs got to see her daughter walk down the aisle. The same month, she reunited with Hassid — an emotional meeting more than a year in the making.
“Northwell saved my life,” Grasso-Krebs says. “Going from urgent care to the ED was a flawless transition. They quickly got to the bottom of what was happening.”
As far as Hassid is concerned, “I take no credit,” she says. “It was Joy who took her health seriously and the great staff at Glen Cove that listened.”
Grasso-Krebs says the experience has given her new perspective — and purpose. She hopes opening up about her experience will help save other women’s lives, too.
“Ovarian cancer is sneaky: There are no screenings, and we need better tools for detection,” she says. “I want to share my story to make sure that no woman ever ignores abdominal pain.
“That’s my mission,” she says. “To raise awareness.”
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