HOW A CANCER SURVIVOR TURNED A DEATH SENTENCE INTO A MISSION TO HELP HIS FELLOW MAN
Kraig Boese shouldn’t be here right now.
He shouldn’t be running a business. And he definitely shouldn’t be throwing a party.
But he is here. He is running a business. And he is throwing a party, a big one Saturday to celebrate a treatment that this determined cancer survivor — who six years ago was given a death sentence — calls a savior.
It was March 2020. The world was learning about a global pandemic that was about to alter everyone’s life for the worst. Boese’s life changed, too, and it had nothing to do with COVID.
The Slayton man was with his wife, Brenda, at the Mayo Clinic, being prepared for a nephrectomy, a surgical procedure to remove all or part of a kidney. Boese had a softball-sized tumor on his kidney, along with more than 50 small tumors on his lungs and cancer spreading through his lymph nodes and renal vein.
Memories of the conversation Kraig and his wife shared with his oncologist are hazy.
“You kind of just go blank … you don’t remember,” he said. “There’s a lot of that conversation I don’t remember; Brenda was telling me what the oncologist was saying — get-youraffairs- in-order, endof- life kind of things.”
The Boeses knew going in that Kraig was suffering from renal cell carcinoma, as he had already been diagnosed in Sioux Falls. The nephrectomy was going to be performed at Mayo.
“They had already started training me on this thing, as we were waiting for some final results on the characteristics of the cancer,” Kraig said. “The doctor got the results while I was there and
When:
Noon, July 13
Where:
Breezy Barn
Admission:
Freewill donation said there was absolutely nothing they can do.”
The news was delivered in as blunt a fashion as possible. There were no kid gloves, no bedside manner. No reason for hope. Just a grim message that had no silver lining.
“Just go home, bend over and kiss your you-know-what good-bye,” Kraig said, paraphrasing, of course. “I would love just to walk back into his office … ‘I’m the guy that was supposed to be dead six years ago — here I am, surprise!’ I just felt like a number.”
A gentler hand would’ve made a big difference, Kraig said. But things got even worse. On the way back home from Rochester, Kraig started bleeding through his bladder.
“I was clotting in my bladder,” he said. “It was like passing 30 or 40 kidney stones, it just kept on clogging.”
An emergency nephrectomy was performed by Board Certified Urology Specialist Dr. Mike Gillett at Sanford in Sioux Falls, and it was there that Kraig finally got some much-needed moral support and started to feel better about his future.
Kraig and his family would later visit Gillette, who told them that Kraig’s story is nearly unprecedented. And his treatment isn’t exactly mainstream. Once a day, Kraig consumes a mushroom extract from the apan mushroom, which is designed to give the body the tools it needs to fight disease.
Tawtnuk apan is a wild mushroom used in some Live Nativ products. One of an estimated 140,000 mushroom species, it is a conk mushroom, which means it grows on trees and does not have a cap or stem. Translated, Tawtnuk apan, known for its powerful healing properties, means “medicine mushroom.”
When a follow-up scan was requested to see if the alternative approach was making a difference, Kraig said, the results shocked his oncology team. The tumors had shrunk by more than half. Nine months of strict adherence to the diet and Apan protocol, the cancer was completely undetectable.
Today, routine scans confirm that the cancer remains entirely gone.
Kraig is more than sold on the Live Nativ treatment — the proof is in the pudding, he says. After all, he went through three rounds of immunotherapy and was told it would do nothing more than extend his life, not save it.
“That would mean I could stay alive as long as I could keep taking these treatments,” he said. “Now, people come to me from all over the place saying, ‘Hey, I hear you survived cancer on this mushroom. Can you share this story with me?’ So I would keep the mushrooms here in my office — I was more curious to see what they would do for the next person.”
Now cancer-free, Kraig, owner of B&K Designs, is now on a mission to help others. He would buy five or six extra bottles to keep in his office and sell them to others. Not only that, he and a few friends have partnered to teach anyone they can how the body can heal itself.
“My goal in life right now is just to get this in as many hands as possible,” he said.
To honor this journey and support others, the Kickin’ Cancer celebration of life event was created. Now in its six consecutive year, the event has expanded into an all-day, all-evening festival. Saturday’s Kickin’ Cancer event will be from noon-midnight at Breezy Barn and will feature all-day entertainment with live music from Trina Thomas, Eric Grunden, and Blake Schmitz.
Several local vendors will be on hand, and there will be a car show as well. An outdoor burger bar will be sponsored by the Currie Sons of the American Legion, and the grand finale will be a performance by the band TPK out of the Twin Cities area that has supported the event since its inception.
There is no admission, but freewill donations will be accepted, as every dollar raised will directly benefit people currently fighting cancer and other life-altering diseases.
“We want to build on this more and more,” Kraig said. “This is by far the most we’ve branched out trying to get more people there. We just want people to celebrate and have fun. People will be there to answer questions — people love supporting other people. There are multiple people in the area fighting cancers and we just want to help them.”
