Joel, me, nancy Brinker, Joni Rodgers, Gary Rodgers
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About Me
- Erin
- This is a picture of my daughter, Maura. She died from metastatic high-grade unclassified sarcoma* on May 19, 2009 at the age of 22. For one year I wrote about her journey with cancer. I don't know if I'll keep writing now or if I'm done. We'll just take it a day at a time. *Sarcoma is a little-known, under-researched, under-funded cancer. To contribute directly to research please consider giving a gift directly to: MD Anderson Cancer Center- Donations, PO Box 4486, Houston TX 77210-4486 ****(Please write "In memory of Maura de Souza " in the memo portion of the check to make sure it goes directly for sarcoma research.)
2 comments:
Wow! Miss a week, miss a lot.
We had several copies of "Promise Me" on our shelves at the Mart. I was thumbing through it looking for the page that Maura was on but I couldn't find it. By the time that I had more time to thumb through, all copies had been sold. So how can we achieve this success for Sarcoma? Is it even something that can be achieved? The difference between Breast cancer and Sarcoma is incidence in the population. Hundreds of thousands of women and men will be diagnosed with B.C. Hundreds will be diagnosed with Sarcoma. Our voices together are loud, but not loud enough to overcome the noise made by breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer and I don't know what it will take for the nation to rally around a cure for Sarcoma. Maybe we can point them to Sammie's mom who prayed and begged that the Lord would take her child because Sammie was in absolute agony for days while actively dying of Osteosarcoma or to Delaney who survived Ewing's Sarcoma only to develop another form of Sarcoma, MPNST, the kind I have, 3 years later. Delaney prays to God every night that He will take her home because she is tired and she is hurting and she is oh so sick of suffering at the ripe old age of 12. Or maybe they will take notice of Greg who left two small boys behind. His Sarcoma was so aggressive, he barely made it into the ring to throw one punch much less a KO. I can't accept a 50% success rate over all forms of this disease and I am appalled at a 20% cure rate for Rhabdomyosarcoma at ANY stage. When we go to an Oncologist, we hope they have one treatment that will help us and if that one drug fails, we hope their is a clinical trial and if there is no clinical trial, we hope we don't suffer much. That shouldn't be acceptable to anyone. I would love to see a little pink join together to help the yellow, the gold, the greens and the blues share in the same hope that they enjoy post diagnosis.
I heartily support a walk for sarcoma. Let's be the entrepeneurs! :)
Kathy
I am still in the first half, and am really enjoying reading about the sisters' relationship. I actually find myself forgetting the fate that lies ahead for Suzy...and I then feel pissed off when I remember, because as you read you start to get a sense for her love of life, and her love of her family, and sister of course. And you realize it's all about to be stolen.
But I've decided being pissed off can be a good thing. It can lead to action. I hope I walk away from the end of this book pissed off enough to do something, whatever that may be.
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