Dr. Kathryn Anne Altonji, a new mother and rising star at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, has died at 34
Dr. Katy Altonji knew she looked young. So she gently but firmly would insist that her patients call her Dr. Altonji. It was to remind them she was the one in charge and they should heed what she told them.
At just 32, she’d achieved her dream job — a position at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab working with patients who suffered traumatic brain injuries. Last year, she also was tapped to help train young doctors in her field.
Her career was going great. And so was her family. She and her husband Jonathan Wolleben had a baby boy, Matthew, who, thankfully, had proven to be a good sleeper.
Then, on Jan. 1, her world changed. Dr. Altonji got a shock diagnosis of her own: She had advanced-stage colon cancer.
She stopped working, focusing on her family and her treatment.
But the chemotherapy she was undergoing wasn't slowing the cancer's spread. So her husband, a biotech analyst, began hunting for treatments that might prolong her life. Along with her medical team, he helped secure for her an experimental immunotherapy treatment.
But, on Oct. 8, Dr. Altonji died. She was 34.
Her husband and other family members were at her bedside. Louis Armstrong’s version of "La Vie en Rose" was playing on a speaker nearby.
It was the song the couple had danced to when they got married on the back porch of Dr. Altonji’s parents’ home in Northbrook during the pandemic.
"She was such a determined person and did her best to fight this disease that we’re seeing more and more in people her age,” said her mother Kathleen Altonji. "And for someone who took such good care of herself. It's very devestating to us."
"We did everything we could and don't have any regrets on how things went," her husband said. "She never really complained about the cards she was dealt. It was always: 'What do we have to do to get more time with Matthew and be happy?' "
Dr. Altonji loved bringing people together and hosting. Whether it was "bagels and bubbly" or "wine down the week" with wine and cheese or slicing into the flag cake she made every Fourth of July, she was quick to RSVP or send an invite.
In recent months, she found new ways to focus on others, mostly her 21-month-old son. She'd take him to "Mommy and Me" classes, the beach, the pool, the library and stroll him around their neighborhood in Glenview with Winnie, their dog.
People who knew her said she was always thinking of others.
She sent a friend, Audrey Hiltunen, a fellow doctor who was returning to work after having her first child, a book titled "Is Mommy a Doctor or Superhero?"
She got her oncologist a thank-you present — a coffee-table book titled "Angels in our Midst."
She gave the hospital staffer who cleaned her room a gift card to the coffee shop.
And she checked in on another friend who has breast cancer.
She found peace in doing yoga and painting in watercolors. One of her favorite subjects to paint: the flowers her husband would bring her. She loved to cook — lambshank and orzo was her specialty. And she and her husband liked to to watch rom-coms on Netflix.
A week and a half before she died, she went with her little boy to a music activity class.
"She was the epitome of grace through all of this," her husband said.
Wolleben said that, at a doctors' appointment shortly after Dr. Altonji's diagnosis, there were five doctors in the room, when he made an off-the-cuff quip to try to lighten the mood. At first, that was greeted only by silence.
But then, he said: "The doctors glared, but Katy laughed. And then they were, like, 'Oh, OK, this is the relationship they have.' "
Kathryn A. Altonji was born Jan. 31, 1990. Her father Joseph Altonji is a legal consultant. Her mother is an event planner for nonprofits.
Dr. Altonji went to Attea Middle School in Glenview and graduated in 2008 from Glenbrook South High School, where she swam and played water polo, before heading to Indiana University.
She attended the Medical College of Wisconsin and did a fellowship at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey before returning to Chicago to work at Shirley Ryan, formerly called the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
"She loved caring for patients, people with traumatic brain injuries who may never move again, some who might be able to communicate with only their eyes," her husband said. "She had people in catatonic states who were later able to walk and leave the hospital and lead normal lives."
"She had an amazing smile that came from the inside because she was just happy and loved what she was doing," said Dr. Gayle Spill Ephraim, a colleague at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. "She was such a great doctor and advocate for her patients and just kind and compassionate and diligent and such a great role model who advocated for young women in medicine."
Joseph Altonji remembers how a pink Teddy bear that his daughter called Bear and took with her everywhere as a girl went missing near where the family lived at the time in Lincoln Park. She'd dropped it by accident on the street on a snowy day, and everyone panicked when they realized it was missing.
"Fortunately, the plows hadn't come through yet and buried it," the father said. "Katy still has it."
She was always protective of her two brothers — Chris, an artificial intelligence researcher with Apple, and Michael, who attended the United States Military Academy West Point and served as an Army Ranger.
"Her brothers adored her and were as close to each other as you can ever hope for," their father said.
"During her residency, she set up a program for other residents to better understand how traumatic brain injury specifically affects veterans, and she had four or five different veterans she knew through her brother come and talk to students about it," her husband said.
In an email to colleagues after her death, Dr. Elliot Roth, who chairs the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, wrote: "Katy demonstrated an overwhelming amount of kindness toward others, and as a result, everyone (without exaggeration) loved her."
A memorial fund in her name has been established at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab to help cover the out-of-pocket costs that resident physicians incur when they travel to present their research findings in traumatic brain injury at national and international medical conferences.
"She was a perpetual bright light of optimism for her patients but also for everyone that she worked with," Dr. Monica Rho, the Shirley Ryan residency program director, wrote in an email to colleagues.
A visitation for Dr. Altonji is being held from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Donnellan Family Funeral Services in Skokie. A memorial Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Glenview.