DETROIT LAKES – Karen Daggett is dying.
The 79-year-old Detroit Lakes resident has planned her funeral and determined what music will be played and what sermons will be read.
“I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer,” she said. “They said if you make it past September, we’d be surprised.”
In the time she has left, she thinks about the meaning of her life.
“Years ago, a friend told me that some souls come here to teach and others come here to learn,” Daggett said. “Every morning when I wake up with a pulse, I have a purpose.”
Perhaps Daggett acquired her grace in the face of death through several near-death experiences that taught her that life is about struggle. Sometimes a struggle leads to inner strength, sometimes it uplifts others. And sometimes the struggle is as black and white as life and death. And in her final struggle, Daggett realized that every box in a calendar is like a present waiting to be unwrapped.
“Every day has meaning,” she said, adding that her goal for the past decade has been to talk about the importance of enzyme and drug reactions in the liver.
Barbie Porter/Detroit Lakes Tribune
In the golden years there is the opportunity to teach
As Daggett’s life entered her golden years in the early 2000s, she celebrated Valentine’s Day with her husband, Delta Daggett. During a fancy meal, her vision blurred and her heart began to beat irregularly. A hospital stay led to extensive tests at the Mayo Clinic. One of the tests was a recent scientific study that examined how enzymes in the liver metabolize drugs. The test found that a drug Dagget had been prescribed caused a buildup of critical amounts of potassium, magnesium and calcium. Eventually, her organs would fail.
Since that Valentine’s Day that brought her to her retirement, the number of enzyme tests has increased and their costs have decreased.
“I’ll talk about it to anyone who will listen,” she said. “For God’s sake, get your tests done. I recommend using OneOme. It’s the most important thing you’ll ever do. You could have something as mundane as a broken bone and you could be prescribed medications that you can’t metabolize.”
This knowledge saved her more than once. In 2020, her battle with blood cancer began, which led to a stay in a psychiatric clinic.
“I was part of a new drug trial (for blood cancer),” she said, noting that the two main drugs were metabolized by an enzyme in her liver and everything was fine. However, a side effect of the drug caused her to develop cold sores. A third drug was added.
“That’s when things started to get weird,” she recalls, noting that she started saying strange things and “talking through her fingers.”
Her doctors and family realized that something was wrong with her mental health and she was admitted to the Mayo Clinic’s psychology department.
As part of a drug trial, she was assisted by a large team that investigated the cause of the sudden onset of psychosis. A few days later, says Daggett, the culprit was identified.
“They discovered that I was suffering from drug-induced encephalopathy,” she said.
Drug-induced encephalopathy can lead to partial or complete loss of oxygen to the brain, which in turn can result in changes in brain function.
Daggett said it was discovered that the third drug they added went through the same enzyme as her other two drugs. An overload of the enzyme triggered the health crisis. After her medication was corrected, she returned to the Mayo Clinic with a clear mind. But her battle for health had only just begun.
After learning to manage her blood cancer, a spot was discovered on her lung. Doctors removed an upper lobe of one of her lungs, and in June 2023, her tests were “consistently perfect for the first time in 11 years.”
“I was totally psyched,” she said, noting that the respite ended several months later when a tumor was discovered in her lower left lung. It had metastasized to her bones, kidneys and brain.
Getting up and being knocked down again can sometimes lead to despair or doubts about one’s faith. But Daggett had already had a run-in with God years before.
The decisive moment came in a broken-down car
Born Karen Nelson, the eldest of six children to Doris and August Nelson of Lake Park, Daggett spent her childhood milking Grade A Jersey cows, harvesting crops and learning perseverance from her parents.
The 1963 Lake Park High School graduate married her high school sweetheart.
“He turned out not to be so sweet,” she said, noting that at the time of the divorce they had three children, all under the age of 6. “I was in my twenties at the time.”
She gave up her life in St. Louis, Missouri, and returned home to live with her parents. She found work as a paralegal, but in the Twin Cities.
“People just didn’t give up these jobs here until they retired,” she said, noting that her job in the cities required her to stay with a friend on days off and commute home.
“I was invited to a Christmas party at the company I worked for and my parents encouraged me to go – they were sick of me sitting at home crying all the time,” she recalls. “So I got in the car and drove off.”
As she approached Frazee, her car stalled. The timing chain broke, and with it her determination to keep going.
“I just sat in the car and cried my eyes out,” she said. “I had no self-esteem left.”
As she sat on the side of the road watching the cars drive by, she wondered why her life as a young adult had been overshadowed by suffering. Although she felt that God had not been on her mind for some time, she told Him that her defining moment had come.
“I mean, I tried it myself and failed miserably,” she said. “So I told him, my life is yours; make something of it. Guess who pulled up.”
After a series of phone calls to find help until her father came to tow the vehicle home, a large man named Delta Daggett arrived. Although she thought men weren’t worth a damn at the time, he took her sharp tones in stride.
“I remember him telling me he understood I was running out of gas and offered to help,” she said. “I told him, ‘I’m not stupid enough to leave Lake Park, head toward Minneapolis and run out of gas after 22 miles.'”
More shenanigans ensued until her father showed up with chains to tow the car home. She went to thank the man who had been waiting with her and learned that her trip to the Twin Cities was still possible. It turned out that the Daggett family owned an airplane and their knight in shining armor had a pilot’s license.
“I felt like Cinderella,” she said. “Without shoes, but without glass slippers.”
After dropping her off at the party, her pilot promised to take her home as well. When she called in the favor about a day later, he drove her home. On the return flight, they stopped for a meal.
“He was just charming,” she said, adding that they married almost six months after they met in May 1974. Together they raised several children – some of their own, some they took in.
Had everything gone right on that fateful day when Daggett attempted to drive to the cities, her life’s trajectory might have been very different. She explained that in her life, it seemed as though everything that went wrong was actually making her life right; that she was changing lanes to get to a destination.
