These days in early December have taken on a new and terrible meaning in my life. It was these first few days, the last of many at Hospice Savannah (Rms 22 and 4), that were the end of someone dear to me.
Sheila Nassif Mrochinski died on December 6th, 2006. She died a loving and caring person, a beautiful and hard-wrung soul, a talented and complete human being. She was kinder, gentler, and more loving than anyone I have ever known. She was the best of her family, and the best of mine. She was kind to everyone -- without flinching or reservation. She lived the kind of life that most of us envy -- but, it was too short, too tragically short.\
She was unlucky to have died so young, and from such a hideous disease. Her breast cancer came upon her nearly unawares: a rash, a sore back, a lack of energy -- you wouldn't think these would add up to breast cancer. But they did. The sore back was the result of a metastatic tumor at the base of her spine. Her lack of energy came from her body fighting so hard to maintain normalcy under the relentless onslaught of cancer. Her rash -- on the upper back and extending under one arm to her left breast -- was the quick rush of IBC, Inflammatory Breast Cancer.
There is no tumor large enough to be discovered by self-examination of the breasts. There is only the virulent growth of cancer cells already metastasized throughout the body.
Sheila was unlucky. Whether it came from environmental causes in the cotton fields (clouds of DDT to play in when she was a little girl at Wagram School in North Carolina) -- or genetic or environmental causes down the line (or too much work, as she would gently tease me with after the diagnosis) -- it came. And IBC was no soft
enemy. It was an unfair, unlucky, and unwelcome killer.
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