The last 2 years of a cancer victim

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Be thankful for every day you have. How quickly it can be over. Sad story of a strong mother with incurable cancer. From the Dallas Morning News:

Cancer victim tried to pack a lifetime of mothering into two years

10:25 AM CDT on Sunday, August 1, 2010

By JAMIE THOMPSON / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Jamie Thompson can be reached at Jamie.Thompson @yahoo.com.

She tried to fill their minds with beautiful memories, of princess parties and water slide rides, pancakes at IHOP on Sunday mornings.

She longed to wrap her three children in a protective spell. She knew what was coming would leave a part of them forever empty.

That is why she fought so hard, enduring the blood transfusions and chemical burns and painful sores. She was haunted by the idea that her children would grow up without any memory of her.

But here, on this summer morning, Leah Siegel knew she was running out of time. As her husband walked into the bedroom, she spoke to him softly.

"I think I'm dying," she said.

"I think so, too," he said.

He crawled into bed beside her, and they were quiet.

•

From the moment doctors told Leah she had breast cancer in 2008 – stage four, "treatable but not curable" – she worried most about leaving her children, Teagan, then 4; Wyatt, almost 2; and Oliver, 3 weeks old.

"I just need 10 years," she told her oncologist.

Leah, then 41, was diagnosed just days after giving birth to Oliver. The cancer already had spread to her liver and bones. Doctors gave her two to three years.

She quit her job as a sports producer with ESPN , where she had earned three Emmys, and began a crushing regimen of doctors' appointments and chemotherapy. This while feeding newborn Oliver every three hours, answering endless questions about Sleeping Beauty, and defusing arguments over the Lightning McQueen sippy cup.

Weeks after Leah's diagnosis, her head bald, her body frail, she sat on her couch, cradling baby Oliver in her arms.

"It breaks my heart that they may not get to know me," she said.

She looked down at Oliver and sobbed.

"That's half the reason I keep fighting, damn it. I'm going to stay alive long enough for them to have some kind of memory of me.

"It doesn't have to be a big moment. Eating grilled cheeses together, coloring chalk on the sidewalk – I don't care what it is. Just something ..."

Leah told doctors she would try any treatment, no matter the side effects, no matter how hard.

•

Sunday my hair was really starting to fall out, so I let the kids cut most of it. Teagan had fun since using grown-up scissors to cut hair is surely something she knows she won't be able to do again unless she becomes a hair dresser ...

Leah posted the message on her CaringBridge blog on Sept. 9, 2008. She started writing as a way to keep family and friends informed. She also posted regularly on Facebook.

Quickly, her following grew to neighbors, strangers, friends of friends. Before long, hundreds were reading her entries and cheering her on.

She wrote about her chemotherapy, her hormone suppression therapy, having to get her ovaries removed. My chemo (Taxotere) makes my ankles fat, she posted on Facebook on May 27. I am cool with no hair, fatigue, etc but cankles is where I draw the line!

She wrote about Teagan's continued love of princesses, and how she turned every backyard stick into a magic wand. She wrote about how Wyatt learned to ride a bicycle, then moved on to riding Gracie, the family's 50-pound Doberman mix.

About how Oliver went from sleeping all the time to crawling to taking his first steps ...

As she wrote, Leah couldn't help thinking ... I'll have my memories. But will they have theirs?

•

By this past spring, Leah began to panic.

"Nothing is working," she cried to her childhood best friend, Amy Sharlitt.

All along, the goal had been to attack her cancer with drugs and stabilize it. Now, doctors seemed to be jumping from drug to drug.

"There wasn't a real plan anymore," said Leah's husband, Eric Loehr. "It seemed like they were grasping at straws."

Leah agreed to try a powerful drug cocktail that caused the most painful side effects yet. Flaming blisters appeared on her hands and feet. It hurt to walk. It was difficult to type or text.

The drugs burned sores in her mouth and throat. For weeks, she couldn't eat. She began to worry that she would starve to death.

Her shoulders began to appear bony and her face gaunt, but her legs and abdomen swelled with staggering amounts of fluid. She no longer looked like herself.

Despite the side effects, the drugs appeared to be fighting the cancer. Her husband thought, We can turn the corner. If she can just hold on ...

More and more, Leah broke down into tears.

During their long telephone conversations, Leah quizzed Sharlitt on their childhood memories.

"That year we went to the beach – how old were we?" she would ask. She seemed obsessed with trying to pinpoint when their first memories began. Had Teagan reached that age? Had Wyatt? Oliver?

Her blog entries became more somber.

It really is time to clear crud and old documents out from my house for "when that day comes," she wrote in May.

In June, Leah and her husband sent the children to their grandparents' house in North Dallas for a few weeks. Leah spent most days in bed.

By then, it didn't seem to matter whether the drugs were killing the cancer. Now, they were killing her.

•

Two weeks ago, relatives crayoned the words "Family Time" on a piece of paper and taped it to Room 624 at Baylor University Medical Center.

Leah knew her body was failing. She didn't have the strength for more chemotherapy. Still, she hoped for a few more weeks, or at least days.

But in case she died soon, she needed to say goodbye to the children.

Relatives drove them to the hospital and tried to prepare them, telling them this might be the last time they saw their mother. They played in the hospital gift shop as their grandmother took them to Leah's room one at a time.

First came Oliver, now almost 2. He walked around the room, eating goldfish crackers and smiling. Leah was too weak to hold him, but a relative lifted him up for a kiss. "Hi, my little man," she said.

Next came 3-year-old Wyatt. He crawled into Leah's bed and threw his arms around her neck. "I love you, Mommy," he said. She gave him a hug.

Then came Teagan, now 5. She seemed more reluctant than her brothers. It was clear she had more thoughts about what was going on.

She crawled into her father's lap.

"Do you have questions?" he asked quietly.

She studied her mother's ashen face, then shook her head no.

•

Hours later, at 2:48 a.m. on July 18, Leah dictated her last Facebook post from her hospital bed.

Well everyone – most of you know I have breast cancer. I need to contact lots of people, and as tacky as it is, Facebook is a good way to do this.

I checked into the Baylor spa Friday due to high potassium levels in my blood. It has actually come down to reasonable levels today. But, it is kind of clear that things are winding down. Elvis might be leaving the building. We are probably down to just days or weeks ...

By dawn, the first of hundreds of responses began pouring in to her website and onto her Facebook page. The family was overwhelmed by the tender eulogies-before-the-fact.

People from across the globe – as far away as Egypt and Israel – sent messages that could instantly be read aloud to Leah as she lay dying in her hospital bed. This was death in the age of the Internet.

People from all parts of her life – colleagues, doctors, friends from elementary school – wrote to her.

"My heart is by your side, sweet friend," wrote one childhood friend.

"It seems so ridiculous that I'm sitting here typing a farewell ... but I'll have faith it's not a goodbye and that we will indeed see each other again some day ... Save some pizza up there for me ..."

Leah's website drew thousands of hits, surpassing 44,000 visits since she started writing in 2008.

Neighbors were reading, too. On Leah's quiet street in Lakewood, they began tying pink ribbons around every tree on the block.

•

Now it was the family's turn to say goodbye.

One after another, relatives filed into the room, sat beside Leah's bed, talked, laughed, reminisced. Then they shuffled out with a nod or a wave, leaving the heavy hospital door to swing shut behind them.

Leah's mother, Myra MacPherson, sat at the end of her daughter's bed. She was nervous, worried that she might say the wrong thing.

They started talking about Leah's husband, how tender he had been.

"I never knew that kind of love could exist," Leah told her mother.

MacPherson tried not to cry, but tears came.

"I'm sorry, Leah," she said.

"Oh, Mom, you can't help that," she replied gently. MacPherson bent over and kissed her daughter on the forehead.

"Goodbye," she said softly.

"Goodbye," Leah replied.

As MacPherson walked out of the room, her shoulders shook with sobs.

•

A few days after her initial goodbye, Teagan asked to see her mother again.

Her father was conflicted. Leah, heavily sedated, sometimes breathed with difficulty and moaned. He didn't want to keep mother and daughter away from each other, but he didn't want to frighten Teagan, either.

Finally, he decided to let her visit.

Teagan stepped into the room and saw her mother lying in bed, tubes taped to her arms, machines beeping behind her.

She walked over and climbed into her mother's limp arms. "I love you, Mommy," she whispered. Leah lay quietly, her eyes closed.

Teagan lingered in the room for about 20 minutes. Beside her mother's bed, family photographs flashed across a digital frame. It caught Teagan's attention. She walked over and began to narrate the images.

"Look, Mom, that's us in Costa Rica."

"That's at Hailey's house."

"That's me wearing the dress that Grandma Myra bought me."

The pictures kept coming, and she described them one by one.

It was as if Teagan was telling her mother, I remember. I remember ...

•

Leah Siegel died at 4:30 a.m. on Monday, July 26. She was 43.

Jamie Thompson is a Dallas freelance writer. She can be reached at Jamie.Thompson @yahoo.com.

RECONSTRUCTING THE LAST YEARS
The scenes depicting the final months of Leah Siegel's fight with breast cancer, including her last days in the hospital, were reconstructed through interviews with her husband, Eric Loehr; her best friend, Amy Sharlitt; and a half-dozen other close relatives. The story also contains quotes from earlier interviews with Leah Siegel.

Link

[Murphy3]

...one of those stories that I hate to read but must ... it just hits too close to home.

[Male30Dan]

Yeah, I had to choke back tears on that one. That is a very, very sad story. Being a father of a 4 year old and a 2 year old, I already know how hard it is to leave my children even for a week for business. I can't even fathom the struggle this must have been for this lady. I remember seeing the ESPN headline when she passed and I had no idea about her story. Just so sad. I hope they took countless hours of video so those kids can still grow up knowing their mother and the love she had for them.

[grbh]

This can be a cynical board (in a good way) but this should be read