Bonnie and Bob Krall, a married couple, navigated the COVID-19 pandemic with relative ease. Bonnie experienced a couple of mild cases, while Bob had an asymptomatic infection. reported by The Hill
“We were both healthy as can be,” Bonnie Krall shared. “We had just finished a giant trip to the Western United States, we came back, and bam, Bob was diagnosed.”
Shockingly, Bob wasn’t diagnosed with COVID-19 but with two very rare forms of cancer. Shortly thereafter, Bonnie received a similar diagnosis.
“I had an 8 1/2 pound tumor in my abdomen,” she revealed on MSN, “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “I was healthy in December, and by April, they diagnosed the cancer.”
The Kralls are part of a growing group of individuals who, after contracting COVID-19, develop rare types of cancer, sometimes more than one kind.
“We started noticing some very unusual patterns,” noted their physician, Kashyap Patel. At Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, Patel and his team have documented troubling links between COVID-19 and cancer, including:
- A 20-30% increase in new cancer patients
- Multiple patients with multiple cancers
- Couples and siblings developing cancer within months of each other
- Cancer patients relapsing after years of remission
Patel suggests that inflammation, a common reaction to COVID-19, could be a key factor in the emergence of these cancers. The New York told that “Inflammation triggers many genetic changes in a genome that can create a propensity for developing cancer in certain individuals,” he explained. Patel is analyzing data from nearly 300 patients, focusing on inflammatory biomarkers and Long COVID antibodies to explore the connection to unusual cancers.
For the Kralls, there is some relief in the present. Bob is in remission, and Bonnie is close to it. However, the underlying cause of their simultaneous health crises may remain an unsolved mystery.
