Karen Strickholm: A Will To Live When Health Issues Take Everything
Karen Strickholm: A Will To Live When Health Issues Take Everything
Until 6 April 2026, Karen Strickholm was living, knitting and sometimes writing from a place no one wants to be, but about 25 percent of us will wind up: a nursing home.
Karen Strickholm, before her body attacked itself.
During a period of about 18 years, a congenital health condition that was once hidden – a tumor on her pituitary gland – took all she had built in life.
“Medical bills consumed all assets – the company, savings and retirement funds, three-unit home with detached office in Santa Fe (New Mexico), two investment houses in TorC (Truth of Consequences, New Mexico), vehicles, even the dogs (re-homed),” Karen wrote in a 2025 timeline, a sort of CV, of her illness. “A lifetime, reduced to boxes.”
Karen remained defiantly upbeat despite these hideous travails, that included an odyssey through the American healthcare system. Every time a new setback knocked her down, she got back up, even if she was a little slower, a little more unsteady than before.
Karen Strickholm, early in her health journey, with get well flowers.
She never stopped believing she was going to get well, walk again, walk out the door of the nursing home and back into a full life. She was as brave as she was optimistic.
My friend, Karen Strickholm, died 6 April 2026, of pneumonia and sepsis in a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was 67.
I didn’t find out about her death until the middle of May. The day she died, I was in a hospital ICU fighting sepsis and pneumonia and other complications from major spine surgery.
A couple of weeks after I was back home from the hospital, I had a funny feeling. I hadn’t heard from Karen, but I had been pretty out of it and not checking in. We often communicated on Mastodon. When I checked Mastodon, her last post was 31 March, the day I was sent to the ICU with sepsis and pneumonia.
The post said she had sepsis and pneumonia and was in hospital.
❤️💨🌳💨📢📢📢💨🌳💨❤️
Pneumonia AND sepsis!!
In midst of sending out last update (ĺink below), air got bad here in Albuquerque NM from huge fire. Came down with #pneumonia + #sepsis. In hospital now. 😞
Struck with extra medical bills, need help to cover ~$2,000. Thanks for nothing to the stinkin’ Rs. Whatever you can toss in the pot, greatly appreciated. Links to contribute here.
It only took a single online search to find her obituary.
https://www.legacy.com/legacy/karen-strickholm
Karen’s final photo, 31 March 2026
Billions have lived and died on this Earth, most leaving nothing more behind of themselves than bones or ash.
Maybe there’s a birth announcement, then an obituary. Maybe there’s some fading photos in an album, a headstone marking a grave. Memories might live on with a couple of generations of direct descendants and relatives, but once they are gone, so is any indication of a life lived.
These days, a bunch of social media posts, digital photos online, maybe a few YouTube videos, may create a temporary unintentional memorial after death.
That’s it.
I’ve collected the digital artifacts of Karen’s life — photos, posts, essays, YouTube videos. During the next several posts Karen will tell you her story, recount her journey.
First, some background and then the prelude by Karen:
I met Karen Strickholm in the mid-1990s when she was doing public relations work in Hollywood. I was a journalist for trade magazines covering entertainment and retailing.
Journalists don’t often become long-term friends with public relations people. But anyone who knew Karen knows she was a NOT an ordinary person, much less an ordinary Hollywood PR type, a “suit” as she liked to say.
She was fun, interesting, well-read, super smart. She was kind, nice, giving, and would go out of her way to help out a journalist.
She was the kind of person who would take me out to lunch, on her firm’s dime, and we’d talk about business for five minutes, and then spend 85 minutes talking about everything else in the world, often laughing our behinds off.
Long after I’d moved on to other jobs not covering Hollywood, I’d still check in with her, sometimes just a couple of times a year.
In the early 2000s, Karen decided to move from Los Angeles to Santa Fe New, Mexico, where she worked remotely and continued building her media relations business.
Then came 2008.
“Diagnosis, brain surgery, and 16 magical months feeling better. Then return of symptoms, tumor regrowth,” Karen wrote.
Her relief was short-lived.
“Tumor continues to grow, compressing the HPA (HPA, hypothalamic pituitary axis) and causing a traumatic brain injury (TBI). A tumor of this type is considered large at the size of a marble. My tumor was the size of an extra-large egg. Most of these tumors are soft, but this one was hard and fibrous.
Note (from Karen): (The) Pituitary is part of the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary axis). The HPA serves as the “Pentium chip” running the entire body via a complex system of hormones – reproduction, thyroid, adrenals, digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, fluid levels, immune system, muscle and bone strength, sleep, metabolism, digestion, sex drive, vitality.
“Symptoms are increasingly severe – breaking bones (including broken back and ribs, shattered radius bone, chronic microfractures in feet), unexplained dramatic weight gain, chronic and near-constant maladies, severe chronic pain, inflammation, unexplained infections, constant headache, extreme fatigue, depression, anxiety and more.”
2011 – “Second brain surgery with complications, medically induced coma, followed by a massive pulmonary embolism shower (high mortality rate), damaging pulmonary artery, blowing up right chamber of heart. Time in a rehab, then home on oxygen.”
2012-2015 – “Attempt to rehabilitate in Santa Fe, difficulty breathing, difficulty walking. Extreme back pain standing, requiring a walker to move.
“Ultimately relocated to Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, for lower altitude and curative hot springs, hoping for a better chance to finally recover. Some ground is taken, but TBI is under-treated.”
2015-2020 – “All original symptoms return with a vengeance – Chronic pain, infections and illnesses, extreme fatigue, muscle weakness.
“Diagnosed with Secondary Addison’s Disease (similar to what JFK had). A small scratch on leg became fungally infected, blooming into six large, painful open wounds that remain to this day.
“Medical bills consumed all assets – the company, savings and retirement funds, three-unit home with detached office in Santa Fe, two investment houses in Tor C (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico), vehicles, even the dogs (re-homed).
“A lifetime, reduced to boxes.”
May 2020 – “Pneumonia evolved into septic shock. Heart rate 195 with RVR (stroke territory), followed by critical blood pressure drop in ER.
“Nurse happened to be in room, brings me back.
“My Grand Tour of medical facilities begins – Sent from Tor C (Truth or Consequences) ER to Las Cruces (New Mexico) ICU, stabilized and sent to rehab, then specialty wound care hospital in El Paso, Texas. Recovering nicely, then…”