I just posted this (the below cut-and-paste in quote marks) in answer to someone in another thread, but I'm afraid people will miss it if it is only there, as that thread is about protein bars. Several people have asked about how Sarah is doing, so I'm also posting this in this new thread. That way, I've answered the person who asked in the thread the question was asked in, but also posted this for anyone else who is looking specifically for info on how our dear friend, Sarah, is doing. The thing is, I wasn't planning on posting anything because I don't really know too much, as I haven't heard from her in a while. She does not have computer access where she is now and I'm not sure she would be up to e-mailing now anyway. But here is the latest info I do have, copied from my response in the other post:
"Okay, U R the 2nd person from this board to ask me how Sarah is doing in the past 24 hours, so I guess I'd better post something on the board here. I answered the other person by private message, because I didn't really want to post anything. But I can see now that everyone is wondering, so I will tell you that Sarah has gone into the hospice "for a few days", as she explained in her most recent e-mail to me. I have not heard anything since then, and she had said she would not have computer access there. All we can do is continue to pray for her every day. She's been dealt such an awful hand, literally "awful", full of awe. She is having to face things that are hard to imagine having to face. Again, all we can do is continue to love her and pray for her, and let her know that we care and are here for her."
Believe me, I know this is hard. I didn't even want to post anything, but since people are asking, I realize that everyone cares so much and it isn't fair not to post anything when people are so concerned. Yet the thing is, I really don't know much except that she is in the hospice. Like I said, she said she is going to be there "a few days", but I'm not sure what will really happen and I'm sure she isn't sure how things are going to go either. There are no words to express how much I wish we could do more for her and I know you all feel the same. Just keep praying for her and for her son, husband, parents, sisters, and other loved ones.
-------------------- "Lemon tree! Tippy toe!" - George Costanza - Posts: 4184 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Thanks Peppermint, she's been on my mind, so I think that means I should be praying. I am sending her thoughts of light. Again, thank you for letting us know what you do know.
-------------------- 48 yr old, 5 kids, O+ secretor married to a B, 1 kid is a B, the rest are 0's! Posts: 46 | From: California | Registered: Mar 2002
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I do think of her often, though i haven't been on the board much lately.
I have a friend who went through the same thing and i always felt that i wasn't doing enough to help her. I think the people on this board have been a real support for her and will continue to be with her through this. I know that she must be feeling all of your love and support.
Mickey
Posts: 186 | From: Bay area, CA | Registered: Mar 2002
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Peppermint, Thanks so much for giving us an update. I always think no news is good news,until I read a "few days" in hospice. It felt so depressing to me. Yet what I've learned from Sarah is to never dwell on the worst case scenario.. and to always look for something positive no matter what.
I sincerely hope that Sarah can feel how much we all love and admire her,for her bravery and for taking this very unwelcomed journey with profound grace and humor.. She has deeply touched the lives of so many of us. Sarah truly deserves a miracle and I'm hoping and praying that she gets it!
Posts: 127 | From: NY | Registered: Sep 2002
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Is her husband able to access her e-mail? Maybe he can pass along our wishes to her. Also, does he check this site? Love, Sea Salt & Light, Mrs "T" O+
-------------------- B. 10/6/47,lived on a farm, small town, & big city. Native Illinoisian.....An old La Leche veteran....love working in retail sales & restaurants(working around the public)....a fishy Christian............ Posts: 498 | From: Chicago, Illinois 60657 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Mrs. T., to answer your Q, I think her husband gives her her e-mails when he can. I know he has done so in the past. But he has so much on his plate right now to deal with, he might not be doing so right now. Also, Sarah might not be up to reading anything right now. I'm sure if she asks him to print them for her, he will, so by all means write to her if you want, and the worst that happens is she doesn't get the e-mail, but at least you know that you wrote and, if she is getting it and reading it, it might make her day.
Mickey, I definitely wish I could do more. But I think Sarah knows there isn't much we can do so remotely except love her and pray for her and her family. She's an exceptionally brave person and she's coped remarkably all along. We just have to hope that she will all the way through, and take some comfort in the fact that she has a loving family and such a strong spirit.
All we can do is love and pray, but that is something.
posted
Thanks for the update, Edna. Is there anyone else here who lives near her and can talk to her by phone?
It's odd how Email brings us so close to people we have never seen. On another list a guy posted a Good-bye to all of us before starting hospice and he was gone in less than a week. I hope Sarah's remaining time will not be unpleasant. I think hospice makes it all go easier.
Posts: 26 | From: Arizona | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Cindy O Sec: Thanks for the update, Edna. Is there anyone else here who lives near her and can talk to her by phone?
It's odd how Email brings us so close to people we have never seen. On another list a guy posted a Good-bye to all of us before starting hospice and he was gone in less than a week. I hope Sarah's remaining time will not be unpleasant. I think hospice makes it all go easier.
Now, wait a minute, let's not write anyone off prematurely! Hey, she's a fighter and a remarkable one. She might just outlive us all, you never know. Her cancer is very advanced, but I still have hope. It could be denial, but how does one really distinguish between denial and hope? Stranger things have happened than advanced cancer going into remission, and she has certainly been attacking (she would hate me using that word...hope she doesn't read this!) the cancer aggressively, so who knows, maybe it (the cancer) will reach its limit and wave the white flag before she does. She has so much to live for and is fighting hard to be here for her son as long as possible.
She lives in London, so there is really no one from this board who lives close to her. I have spoken to her on the phone. She is just as lovely "in voice" as she is in her written word. I know I keep saying the same thing, but here it comes again, all we can do is pray that, no matter what happens, no matter what comes, God is with her and her loved ones and envelops them all in comfort, love and peace.
She's not gonna go down without a fight, even though she hates that kind of metaphor ("fight", "war", "attack"), but sometimes what other words can one use? I dunno. Anyway, she's really trying to stick around as long as she possibly can, so I continue to have hope that maybe by some miracle she can stare down this cancer. I know it's a longshot, but I'm not giving up hope. If this is denial then so be it. Why not have a little denial right now, what could it hurt? Hope can only help, and I don't think it is unrealistic or setting myself up for a big fall, not as long as one is realistic about the chances, but even though I know the odds are not looking good, still there is a chance. Let's just all wait and see what happens. The guy you wrote about may have been gone within weeks but every case is different!!! I think she could outlive us all. She's the strongest person I've ever met...not that I've met her in person, but U know what I mean. The worst could happen, but so could a miracle. As far as I know, Sarah has not given up, so I'm not either.
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Although it's harder for us to handle, from what I have seen in friends who have died of cancer, it's harder on them if those around them refuse to let them go easily when the time comes. I don't know Sarah personally, or what her mindset is right now. Our encouragement to keep fighting is good for a period of time, but eventually they begin to feel they are letting us down if it's time for them to go and they accept it. One friend was so sure I would be too upset by her death, and asked that I not be told when it happened. Of course, I found out later and was devastated, because I had been in denial that she was going to die. I decided after that to accept whatever the person wants, even if I would prefer them to keep fighting because I will miss them. Just my two cents on this.
Posts: 26 | From: Arizona | Registered: Dec 2001
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Cindy, I totally hear and understand your point, and I agree. I only said all that about continuing to hope because (and, bear in mind, that was before today, when I received the update from David, Sarah's husband, which I posted per his request) I was taken aback when I read your comment that your friend who went into hospice was "dead within a week", as what I thought was: "What if Sarah reads that? How will she feel?"
It is just that she has never once said anything to me other than that she is determined to live as long as she possibly can. I thought maybe that line would upset her, so I wanted to offset it by pointing out that there is still hope. Of course, being so remote as on the net, it is hard for us to know what point her cancer is at and whether it is or isn't realistic to have even a sliver of unlikely hope, or whether that would really be denial. However, now that I read David's update, I'm very sad to have to type that I now do feel we are at the end. And I don't think Sarah will ever read that I said that, as David says she can't see to read and is now confused some of the time. I do think now that we all--or me, anyway, I can't say what everyone "should" do, only myself--need to try to somehow wrap our heads around the fact that God would take this young mother from the world, that she is really going to die, and that we have to find some way individually to cope with that.
It is just that, even though I suspected that strongly last week, too, when I read that one line of yours about your friend being "dead within the week", I just wasn't sure how Sarah would take it if she did read it. The last thing she said to me was that she would be "back on Monday", as in, out of hospice and back home, so I thought maybe 1.) she would read that and 2.) there was still some tiny shred of hope and that, if there was, and if she was still determined to hang onto it, however remote, and try, that I wanted to support her in that. However, you also have an important point that it is important for friends to let dying friends know at a certain point, "hey, it is okay to let go. We can take it. We're here for you, we love you, but as hard as it will be, we can take it and we know it is coming." The difficult thing is knowing when that point is. Especially when you only get all your news via the net. That is why I was concerned about your comment and tried to say, hey, maybe there is still hope. In case she saw that and felt we were giving up on her before she was ready to let go. However, now that I read David's update today (which, to repeat again, I posted in another thread), I know we are at the end. All we can do now is continue to love her and pray for her and her family.
Apparently, whoever sent her and her family to Paris was someone from the BTD community. Whoever you are, you are a wonderful, wonderful person. Bless you. That trip was priceless to that family.
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My first friend who died from breast cancer was 36 and had a six year old daughter. She's the one I wanted to keep fighting forever. I know how you feel about that.
Posts: 26 | From: Arizona | Registered: Dec 2001
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In Sarah's case, she did put up an absolutely valiant effort to stay alive as long as possible. For all I know, she still is, but perhaps she has now accepted what seems to be inevitable. Actually, I think it is possible to do both: Accept that death probably is coming, yet keep trying to prolong life as long as possible and hope for a miracle. Of course, if the suffering becomes too great, there is a time to let go, and only Sarah truly will know when that time is for her. I hope and pray that, as Joe grows up, he will always know how bravely and hard his mom fought to be here for him as long as she possibly could.
And I'm sorry to hear about your friend. I see you have been through this before. God, it sucks. Why take Sarah and leave Osama bin Laden? I know, I know...it doesn't work that way. The cosmos is an unknowable thing. A blogger on Dr. D.'s site described God as "frightening and beautiful" in a recent blog (Erika Klus). That really hit me as being a poetic and true way to put it when I read that phrase today. Frightening and beautiful. That describes life, our universe, and maybe even God.
Well, there is a good chance I'm rambling, so I'll shut up...
I know what you mean about being in denial. My friend passed away a couple of years ago from breast cancer. I had a hard time excepting it even up to the very end. I think one of the things that made it hard to except is because up until the last few weeks of her life she still looked soo healthy. My friend battled the cancer for years and came back from it many times, so i think everybody thought she would do it once again. She is my inspiration because no matter how bad she felt she always had a smile for you, always was genuinely happy to see you and always made you feel special.
My love and prayers are with Sarah and her family.
Mickey
Posts: 186 | From: Bay area, CA | Registered: Mar 2002
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Today (Wednesday), I'm not doing well at all. I'm at work and I just feel I could burst into tears at any second. I've been so sad for Sarah, for Joe, and for David, that it is only now, today, hitting me that, my God, *I'm* going to lose my friend. She really won't be at the other end of a mouse click. (Okay, DAMN, the tears are fighting me to come out, don't they know I'm in a cubicle here, as in, at work? Damn, stop that, tears.) I personally cannot imagine the world without Sarah in it and I have never even met her in person. But without her voice of reason and perspective to guide me through all my daily obsessions and anxieties, I don't see how it can be done. There she was battling cancer and it seemed she was always the one who was the pillar of strength and calm in our friendship. I feel guilty that I didn't support her more. I tried, but she would always turn the focus back to me and my probs. She really had a need to be "normal" and NOT focus on her cancer all the time. She told me once, she was so sick of being "poor Sarah" and just longed to be Sarah again. I think participating in this board and helping others made her feel more normal and got her out of the cancer sometimes as a tiny escape from the unescapable.
Anyway...I'm not doing well today.
Again, I'm so glad we all have each other to talk to about this or I would probably be immeasurably worse than I am, sadness-wise.
I just hope her pain remains tolerable as David said it was, and that she gets to communicate everything she needs to communicate to her nearest and dearest. I was going to write "everything she wants to communicate", but I changed "wants" to "needs" because she won't get to communicate everything she wants to communicate to Joe. That would take a lifetime. But I hope she will get to convey what she needs to, to everyone she loves. And I hope that whatever happens to us when we die, it is good.
posted
Oh, Edna, my heart goes out to you.. Your relationship with Sarah was SO personal (more so than most of us) and the connection was no doubt intimate and therapeutic for you both. . It is amazing just HOW intimate a voice on the other end of ones computer can become as I too have developed really wonderful friends this way, with women whom I've never met face to face. Yet, these are women I've grown to love! My days wouldn't be the same without hearing their voices...and like writing in a confidential journal, they are the first people I share the details of my day plus my innermost feelings sometimes. So different from friends I can see, or with those I share real experiences and yet this world of cyberspace has opened up a level of communication and brought us FRIENDS we'd have never met any other way. And it's real. I too have met REAL people with real lives and real families online and we have found a REAL need for one another in a very profound way.
I understand this connection...the words on a screen.. the voice behind the words, although faces remain unseen. It's real. It's a deep connection and a profound loss if it has to end.
This has been a uniquely sad experience for us all. I find it diffiicult to explain to my husband, my grown children or even my friends how this feels to be slowly losing a wonderful person like Sarah...(and I had no personal or intimate conversations with her off this board) Yet this little "family" of voices that responded so profoundly to Sarah's plight is etched in my mind as something I will never forget.
I wish there was a way for those who hadn't been following Sarah's journey, every time she posted, to read all of her posts again..
I think back to the moments where she'd go for treatment and have some hopeful glimmer of good news only to be absent for some time and return with bad news. How I hoped and prayed she'd beat this awful disease...How she frightened me every time she returned to the doctor, went for scans, waited for results..If they were bad, I felt ill...I cried. How could a voice on a computer screen have such an effect on so many of us?
Sarah is MORE than a voice on a computer screen... She IS a real person...even if I've conjured up in my mind what she looks like..with her henna painted bald head...I loved that image of her bald head... WHO do I know who would be ill with cancer, looking for an artist to decorate her head? ONLY a woman with this wonderful spirit...ONLY a woman who took every bad thing that happened to her and made lemonade out of her lemons..Took trips I never took... saw places I never saw and came back, tired and sick and shared it with us all. She shared so much with us all...that even when she couldn't talk to us anymore, I felt grief stricken...The absence of her voice was our first big loss..
I cannot believe she's going to die either..I dont want her son and husband to lose her. My mother died of cancer at 49 and left 3 kids and my father behind. I suppose I know how much mothers don't want to ever leave their children or husbands. I'm somehow feeling Sarah's journey the way I felt my mother having to take this same journey, so I know how real it is.
Edna, we're holding your hand as well as Sarah's and truly I see you as Sarah's soul sister right now. Your loss will be profound...and I'm so sorry for your loss and for how you're feeling.
Posts: 127 | From: NY | Registered: Sep 2002
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Thanks, Maddy. I'll be okay. It is her husband, mom, dad, sisters, and her little son who this is all about, and of course, Sarah herself. I was just venting earlier because I was just too sad not to. But I will be okay. I will just miss Sarah very much, and also have to spend a lifetime trying to internalize and actively do the lessons she taught me about life, in order to honor her and life itself.
Thing is, it has not hit me that she won't be posting or writing me again. It has only so far hit me that it has NOT hit me, ya know? I'm bracing for when it actually truly hits me, as that is when I think I shall break into a crying fit. There have already been a million things I automatically want to write and tell her about, hear her take on, etc. But I can't. What's weird is, even though we've been expecting this time to come for ages, now that it has, it feels and seems so sudden and unexpected...and unbelievable.
Who is going to get exasperated at me for still drinking out of styrofoam cups at work? No one does it like she does. I need that. I miss it already.
quote:Originally posted by Maddy: I understand this connection...the words on a screen..the voice behind the words, although faces remain unseen. It's real. It's a deep connection and a profound loss if it has to end.
Yeah, and that reminds me. My opposite-of-sensitive co-worker, quite a while back, said the following to me one day when I was feeling very sad about Sarah. It might have been when we found out that the cancer had spread to her liver. She said, and I quote:
"But you only know her through the internet, right?"
I had to confirm that she was correct.
"Well, then..."
As in: Well, then, it is totally invalid for you to be feeling sad for her! Back to work you go!
Humans.
-------------------- "Lemon tree! Tippy toe!" - George Costanza - Posts: 4184 | Registered: Feb 2002
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There's no accounting for human stupidity and insensitivity. You and Maddy are so right when you talk about the connection you feel with people here. I definitely feel like I know you even though we only talked by phone once! We've shared a lot of our lives, our struggles, our little triumphs and just the day to day stuff. My heart goes out to you, E, and I'm so so sad about Sarah. Did you see Dr. D's blog today. If you didn't, read it. He talks about Sarah too without naming her. That made me feel sad but so good too. (((((HUGS)))))
Posts: 716 | From: Massachusetts | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Jane O neg secretor: Did you see Dr. D's blog today. If you didn't, read it. He talks about Sarah too without naming her. That made me feel sad but so good too. (((((HUGS)))))
Ditto. Do people still say "Ditto"? Or is it just me. Kids don't even know what a ditto machine is. Back to Dr. D.'s blog, it rocked. I told him so via the comments button. Also posted a HUGE, two-word post under where he posted about a new blog, to the tune of "Truly great" once I read it.
It was good that he talked about it. I thought was he had to say was really good, too.
-------------------- "Lemon tree! Tippy toe!" - George Costanza - Posts: 4184 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I read only some of the thread.. but I wish to add one thought you may care to take with you.. when my best friend left her body I just know she took her soul and stayed a while looking for a place to go dancing. I am pleased to never have mourned her leaving because in my hart she is always still here.. just a while before I see her again.. and in the mean time she is doing what she likes best wich is to look over my shoulder and make sure I never forget her special knack of making me feel safe, of sharing without caring if it was right or wrong .. as long as she was with me all was right.. and since she is gone .. all is still right. In being here for each other we past a stranger in the night and felt on embrace that can last a day or all our life. We where the lucky ones who knew some of her inner warmth in every post she makes and if we want we can reread some old ones.. the wonder of Thomas and this board.. may love and light be with her and may she feel the embrace we send her now and may we here today smile with the thought of her still so much here with us in memories that last a lifetime. Say hi the next time you write ... Joli
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