I was born in September of 1950 in an affluent suburb of Dayton, Ohio, and into a Irish Catholic family of eight children. I was the third oldest (behind two brothers) in my family. My father worked as an accountant for a paint company and my mother was a housewife. We attended parochial schools and belonged to a fashionable country club for five years. I may have been exposed to asbestos when our home, built in the 1920s, was remodeled in the 1950s or when, as a teenager, I worked at a paint company, which was located in a very old building.
It happened the first time when I had just turned 13, in the fall of 1963, in October or November, and I was in the eighth grade. I was upstairs in my bedroom, lying on my bed and reading a magazine, Junior Miss. My brother Fred walked into the room and locked the bedroom door. He came to my bed and got on top of me. (At 15 he was very tall and very heavy; I was small and thin.) As usual, he was wearing only his white t-shirt and jockey underpants. He told me, “This is our secret. You will not tell anyone.” He had his hands all over my chest, and over and inside my vagina (hands only). I didn’t know exactly what was happening and experienced a strange sensation but at the same time I felt sick and dirty inside. I was scared, afraid, and very alone. I think this is why I cannot have an orgasm today. While he was on top of me, I felt paralyzed and I froze. I remained in the frozen position for a while after he left. I don’t remember if he climaxed on that occasion, but in future episodes I could feel the wetness of his semen which would go through his underpants and onto my legs.
I was so afraid of Fred and so afraid of my father finding out about Fred’s abuse. Dad only saw things as he wanted to see them. I was afraid to tell my father because I feared a beating. To instill discipline in our large family, my father would beat any child if he or she did something wrong. Once when I was about seven, some friends and I were playing hopscotch. Fred was teasing us and wouldn’t let us play. So I told my mother. Dad beat Fred for teasing and then Dad beat me for telling on Fred. The beatings would last five minutes and they were horrible. Dad used a thick yardstick. I remember hearing my brothers and sisters screaming for a long time during those beatings. I felt it was very unfair for me to get that beating and so I figured if I told my dad about Fred’s abuse that he would not believe me and he would beat me. So I became a perfect child and never got a beating again.
It is interesting that when I finally had the courage to tell my father, after 30 years, that he responded exactly the way I thought he would – he didn’t believe me and turned totally against me. I was afraid to tell my mother because I did not feel she would believe me and, since she always told my dad to take care of discipline, I felt I would get a beating again. I lived in fear of my father and Fred. I had no one I could turn to; so I kept my secret inside me. I began to live in my own little pretend world. I used to dream about what it would be like when I was older and away from all of this.
Fred would force himself on me in any place: the bathroom (he could get the master key), the bathtub, or my bedroom. It’s hard for me to believe that no one ever knew about these attacks since I had six other brothers and sisters (some were quite young during this period). However, from current (1993) discussions with other members of the family, they can all recall how Fred would roam the hallways, wearing only his t-shirt and underpants. Fred would be very sneaky and make sure no one was around when he attacked. He would attack me four or five times a week. I felt powerless whenever he approached and I would always freeze. This went on for five straight years until I left for college when I was 18.
I chose to major in dental hygiene because that was offered only at Ohio State (in Columbus, Ohio) at that time and that meant that I would be able to leave Dayton to get away from Fred. My father wouldn’t allow me to leave town if the program was offered in Dayton. I felt a tremendous sense of freedom when I left the house. During that five-year period (age 13 to 18), I would estimate that Fred abused me over 1,000 times. It was always the same – the white shirt-underpants outfit, the playing with me, and his climaxing in his underpants, which I could often feel on my legs. During this time he was dating his future wife, Betty.
After the abuse started, I withdrew from the world and felt very dirty. I began to hate myself. I felt that I was responsible for these “sins” and would confess them to a priest who, I knew, was hard of hearing. He would always give me the same penance even though I remember I would tell him that it happened hundreds of times. When he died, I had no one to tell. (Later in life in discussing this with one of my brothers, he said that he noticed a big change in my personality about that time: from fun-loving to sad and lonely. But he didn’t know why this happened.)
I would return from college to Dayton about once a month and on the holidays. I was wiser socially and was a stronger person, even though I was still quite small physically. When I would return, Fred again would attack me but I could push him off, although I sometimes could feel his firm erection and his wet pants in these brief encounters. This continued from the time I was 18 until I was 23 and engaged to my husband. In this time period I guess he abused me about 100 times. Fred got married during this time but that didn’t stop him from attacking me.
I developed anorexia in college and kept very skinny. I wanted to look good on the outside because I didn’t want anyone to know how dirty I was on the inside. I also became obsessive about things.
After I graduated from college and was working for a Columbus dentist, I came to Chicago with Betty (Fred’s wife) and Fred. My dentist-employer and his wife wanted me to go with them to the Chicago dental convention to learn about new things in dentistry. I was going to travel alone and meet them there. When I talked to Fred and Betty, they decided to invite me to fly to their city and we’d go the Chicago together. As I recall, after I arrived, Betty left to work the night shift at the factory where Fred was manager. Fred was then alone with me in their house and he did approach me. But I fought him off while Betty was at work. He did climax but he didn’t get to touch my private parts.
When I was engaged to be married, Fred would approach me when he returned home to Dayton but at this point I was able to push him away. The last time he approached me was shortly before I was married in September of 1973. I told him if he ever approached me again, I would tell my husband.
I did not tell my husband because I feared he would reject me and want a divorce. I developed a mask that I learned to use to hide my inner self, which I felt was very dirty. I always felt ugly inside and I thought I should always look nice on the outside so no one would know how bad I was inside. We didn’t have much sex and I would always insist on total darkness because I didn’t want him to see my body, which I felt was very ugly. I was very passive in bed and most of the time I came up with excuses that I had a headache or was too tired so that I could avoid sex. When I had sex, the memories of Fred’s abuse would flashback most of the time. After some years, my husband asked me if something was bothering me. But I always told him that nothing was wrong.
In 1973 when we married, my husband was a dental intern in the Navy at the National Naval Medical Center. I had been having sinus problems and had an operation for a deviated nasal septum. During the exam, the doctors found a lump on my thyroid. Since I had been irradiated there when I was young, I had surgery. The lump was benign but I had to take medication (Synthroid) for the rest of my life since they removed most of my thyroid.
For the next three years I lived in Spain with my husband who was stationed on a submarine tender, a ship that remained in port to repair submarines. I may have been exposed to asbestos in that time. I delivered our first child, a girl, there in 1976. I was very happy because God gave this little girl to us. I returned to Dayton to live with my parents in December of 1976 since my husband’s ship was transferred to the Charleston shipyard for repair and renovation. My husband said that it was very dusty there and that may have been a source of asbestos exposure (from washing his Navy clothes).
In the summer of 1977 we moved to Cincinnati where my husband set up a dental practice. My back had been bothering me for a while because it seemed to be curving and painful. The diagnosis was kyphosis, lordosis, and scoliosis. In 1978 surgeons repaired it in two operations – involving bone grafts from a rib and hip and placement of Harrington rods. I was in a body cast for a year. Still I felt happy because I had my little girl, a new city, and my husband.
In 1980 I delivered our first son, my second delivery in natural childbirth, and in 1982 I delivered our second son. I was saddened that he was not a girl and felt depressed because I always wanted to have a lot of daughters. Soon afterwards I had pain and had an emergency appendectomy. Life was not going the way I thought it would and I seemed to have a lot of anger, which I directed at my husband.
By 1983 I became very angry and, after ten years of marriage, my husband pressed me into telling him what was wrong. I was very afraid to tell him because I felt dirty about this and I felt he would hate me for this. So I decided to tell him about Fred’s abuse. I was happy that he supported me. At that point we both blocked it out. We didn’t know much about sexual abuse and we knew nothing about its health effects and future consequences. We didn’t want to upset my parents or my family and it seemed best to try to forget about it. We did socialize with the family on all holidays and during the summer on vacations with some of them. Fred and his family lived in another state and would always return for Christmas and usually once during the summer. He never approached me then.
In 1984 we joined a golf club and my husband began to play a lot of golf. About that time I assigned my purpose in life to my children. I hated to think about what I would do when they grew up. I still wanted more daughters but had two more sons in 1985 and 1986, the last one being delivered with an epidural anesthetic.
About this time (1983) the effects of the abuse worsened. I had gone over the abuse a thousand times in my mind. I had so much guilt that I thought it was my fault. I now know clearly that I never told him I loved him – he was always telling me that. I never encouraged him or seduced him. I always responded like a blank wall until I was older and could fight him off. I didn’t go to his bedroom or to the bathroom when he was there. He always came looking for me.
In 1987, we were at a social event at my brother’s house when Fred approached me in the kitchen, pressed his body to mine and said, “Thanks for helping me out when you were younger.” I pulled away from him and walked out of the kitchen. He still had a lot of power over me.
Because of my guilt increasing, I began to get more frequent bouts of depression and I would spend money on junk to relieve this frustration. I would get heavily into debt (tens of thousands of dollars) on credit cards – that I hid from my husband. I would then tell him and he would bail me out. I began to get physically sick when I’d walk into these stores where I was overspending. This got so bad that I could not enter these stores for about a year and a half. My verbal abuse towards my husband and children became more frequent. Life was always tense in our house. Our children picked up my bad abusive habits and there was always fighting, teasing, and yelling. My thoughts of suicide or of God killing me occurred more often. But on the outside, people always commented how wonderful our family seemed. If they only knew how miserable we were.
I worried a lot about most things and I became more obsessive-compulsive. I was always late because I had to check to see if all the appliances were turned off several times before I could leave the house. This seemed to get worse as time passed. In 1990 I had a miscarriage. My husband and I decided that we had enough children at this time and agreed not to try for any more.
About 1990 I had always thought that Fred abused only me because he always told me he loved me and this made me think I was the only one he wanted. I thought his abuse was finished since he had not tried to abuse me anymore. One afternoon, Miss America was on one of the afternoon talk shows and discussed how her father sexually abused her and her two sisters. My niece and my daughter Kelly were watching the show and began to ask me questions about this. I answered their questions vaguely: trying to answer as an outsider who had never been abused.
They had no idea I was ever sexually abused. I was afraid to disclose my secret firstly because I feared people would condemn me and look down on me. And secondly, I didn’t want to destroy the family and tear it apart. I was always afraid if I acted against Fred that most of the family would be against me and that they would feel I was destroying the family. With every year that passed, it became harder and harder for me to tell that awful secret. I did not want to bring up that pain by discussing it. I often tried to bury the memories and my feelings, but they would always return.
A month later my niece confided in me on the day of my dad’s birthday party that she was very afraid of Fred because of the way he looked at her and the way he kissed and hugged her. All of a sudden this made me realize, after all those years, that perhaps he had done this to someone else besides me or would try this on some other innocent person. I began to feel more guilt than ever before because I had done nothing to stop him. I disclosed my secret to my niece to warn her that she might be in trouble and told her never to be alone if he was nearby.
I saw Fred six months later when we entertained the family at our home at Christmas. The thought of what he could be doing (destroying his sons, my nephews, or any other innocent victim) troubled me. I decided I couldn’t be around him any longer. I told the family, never disclosing my secret, that Fred did things that made me angry and I didn’t want to be around him. He violated my right to privacy by inspecting cupboards and closets in my house. He did not respect boundaries and he had done this, year after year (since we hosted the family Christmas get-together in those days), but this was the final straw. Most of my family responded the way I always thought they would if I ever went against Fred: by telling me I was trying to ruin the family by splitting it up. Most of them became hostile to me and they told me I was the cruel person in the family.
In the summer of 1992 I verbally abused my mother who was quite hurt by this. This verbal abuse almost destroyed our relationship. I also verbally abused my daughter Kelly and disowned her because she didn’t turn out the way I wanted her to be. I wanted her to be dependent on me, a perfect mommy’s girl as I was when I was young. But, even at age 16, she was very independent.
Kelly was crushed and confided this to my husband who decided that I needed psychological help. I would not agree at first and he told me that, even though I had been mentally and verbally cruel to him, he would not allow me to verbally abuse our children. He told me that I had to get help or he would admit me to a mental hospital. He had recommended psychological help for me for many years before this time but I never got it because I said I was fine. Prior to this, I had taken out my anger and my frustrations on my husband by verbally and mentally abusing him. When Kelly began to mature, I began to abuse her verbally. My husband told me that a pattern was developing where I might eventually verbally abuse all our children and make their lives as emotionally wrecked as mine was. I guess I was having a nervous breakdown at this point. I was physically sick for an entire week and couldn’t function. I didn’t sleep at night. I was angry at everybody and I wanted to commit suicide. So I decided to tell my immediate family and I agreed to see a psychologist.
A psychologist friend of my husband said that she couldn’t see me but recommended the book, Courage to Heal, which we both started to read. The book helped us to understand sexual abuse and related stories of other women who had similar problems. The authors implied that I shouldn’t feel dirty or guilty about it. This was the first time I realized, after all these years, that my emotional problems were caused by Fred’s sexual abuse. I had never connected that before. The psychologist whom I saw also traced my problems back to the abuse and helped me to see how I had repressed those feelings. She said I had a mask that was difficult for her to see through. She also said that I had much anger inside me, which I had repressed for 30 years and I was lashing out at anyone close to me.
I had always felt partly responsible for allowing Fred to abuse me. I felt this was my sin and that God was always punishing me for my sins. But I never responded to Fred and I never encouraged him. I felt powerless and froze whenever he would attack me. My psychologist told me that those actions were all I could do to survive. Survivors always adapt the best they can in order to survive. I’ve come to understand this by reading about how other women survived their abuse. I thought every bad thing that came my way was a form of God’s punishing me. I never wanted any male children. After we had four sons, I felt this was another way God was punishing me. I would sometimes show these feelings right after one of my sons was born by going into depression. I didn’t want boys because I felt that they might turn out to be molesters. But my psychologist told me that it is not hereditary but rather environmental. When my daughter was young, I would secretly follow my husband around the house to be sure that he wasn’t molesting her.
That summer we decided to tell my sister, who was the next youngest girl in my family. She spontaneously revealed that Fred also tried to molest her on two occasions. But she was stronger physically than I was and she was able to push him away before he could do anything. I couldn’t believe this because I thought Fred had abused only me. This made me realize that Fred’s sickness was worse than I thought and that he might be abusing other people. Until that time I thought he had abused only me. I began to feel more guilt because I didn’t speak up to stop him from abusing other people.
In the autumn of 1992 we told each of my family members, on an individual basis, why I didn’t want to be around Fred at Christmas. We told them about the sexual abuse and the problems I was having. We thought that the family would rally around me, even though the authors of Courage to Heal pointed out that the average family tends to shun the one who has been sexually abused. We thought that ours would be different.
In late October I decided to confront Fred when he returned at Christmas. My psychologist didn’t think that I was ready or strong enough for this. But I was determined to do it then because I couldn’t allow the possibility of Fred’s abusing to continue for another six months or a year (when he would visit here again). I was scared to death to do this. Fred still had power over me and I feared that he would kill me if I told the secret. For days before the confrontation, the thought of it would give me the shakes. My heart felt as if it were going to burst out of my chest. But my husband stood by me; my psychologist helped; and the Courage to Heal book was also a wonderful support. However, without the help of my husband, I could never have gone through with it.
I confronted Fred at my parents’ home in Dayton on the same day that his family and he arrived. We prearranged this meeting so that the parents knew, although Fred did not know. He must have suspected something when he fixed himself a strong cocktail before adjourning to the basement with his wife while his two teenaged sons and my parents waited upstairs. I explained to them that I had been having a lot of physical and psychological problems over the past several years and that this traced back to my having been sexually abused as a child. Fred’s wife was utterly shocked when he admitted having done the abuse, even when they were married. As I confronted Fred, I watched him cower in his chair as a small child will do when afraid. For a large man, this was striking. After the confrontation, my husband and I walked upstairs while Fred and his wife remained downstairs. Fred’s two sons were sitting at a table with my parents. His older son, about age 16, had a look of surprise and asked us what happened – since there was shouting and angry voices during our meeting. While this seemed to be a genuine reaction, Fred’s younger son said nothing and kept his eyes downcast and said nothing, head towards his lap, never looking at us. We wondered if he had been abused.
Now after having confronted my abuser, I became a stronger person. I let go of many of my hang-ups that were caused by the abuse. Believe it or not, I never thought this would happen: that, after all those years of hating myself, I could look at myself in the mirror and actually could begin to like myself. I felt that I did all that I could to stop Fred from abusing others, if he is, since I’ve told his wife and alerted her. I no longer feel under his power and I no longer feel guilty or dirty. The flashbacks of Fred abusing me are not as frequent. Maybe these will go away someday. People tell me I am a lot calmer now. Now that I am beginning to feel better about myself, I am trying to work to improve the relationships within my own family.
I wrote this to my family in 1993 to explain my history and my feelings. Looking back on it, perhaps we should have reported Fred to the police, but I feared that this would alienate me from my family. Ohio laws against sexual offenders require public notice so that anyone living within a certain distance of the offender is alerted as to where the offender lives.
At first my family supported me but that changed when my father said that his door would always be open to all his children. We suggested that all the family participate in a group session with a psychologist about this problem, but they weren’t interested. We also suggested that they read Courage to Heal, but they didn’t want to read about what they felt was “my” problem. My sister and my niece both failed to support me and would not tell the family what they told me about Fred. One brother remembered an incident where a babysitter complained to her parents that Fred was rubbing her leg. Another brother initially supported me and risked being alienated from the family, but he eventually left my side and got back in the fold. My mother did nothing to support me and more or less went along with my father. They never insisted that Fred seek continual psychological help and they did not want to admit that he was a sex offender. He did go to a psychologist for an evaluation but never had therapy.
The next five years were very stressful for me because I loved being with my brothers and sisters and now this was impossible since we had been ostracized. Many were godfather or godmother to our children but they stopped sending them presents, which hurt my children, who were still young at that time. I felt very alone and had trouble making friends. Our sons began to play junior golf and that was a great chance for me to get involved during the golf season. Eventually all four played high school golf and I had the chance to volunteer, which became a big part of my life and helped to fill the void of my family’s absence. Still for the next several years I cried a lot and missed being with my family. This stress of being rejected hurt me, but my husband and my children supported me in my decision.
About five years later, around the autumn of 1998, my family had been asking me to come back. I thought that I would like to and my father said that Fred would be asked to not attend the annual Christmas party. But a few days before the party, my father reneged and invited Fred, which was both a shock and an insult to me and so I again felt rejected and humiliated. I cried a lot and felt depressed because again I was ostracized.
In 2000 my father began the dying process and I came to the hospital as he was near death. My husband and I drove to Dayton: a tense time since we were both still being shunned by the family. On his deathbed, my dad asked me to forgive him, which I did.
I decided to go to my father’s funeral, even though Fred would be there. We did not talk at the funeral but in the weeks that followed, Fred told my mother that he had love letters that I sent to him, although he never produced them. I never wrote any love letters to him. He seemed to want to alienate me further from family ties. This caused more stress for me and my immediate family. To make matters worse, at that time my relatives also became irritated at my husband and told me that I had to choose between seeing them or being with my husband. I chose him. That year I began to have a lot of pelvic pain and had a hysterectomy.
Eventually I did consent to seeing my family over the next few years, although not on holidays. By this time, our sons were involved heavily in high school golf in the autumn and junior golf in the spring and the summer. It was wonderful for me to spend these months following my sons and being a volunteer for the teams that they were on. I enjoyed helping the boys and the coaches. I hated to see it end but I knew it would stop eventually. I often told my husband that I didn’t know what I would do when our children grew up and left home. It was a devastating thought to me. He suggested traveling or more volunteer work but I was interested mainly in my children, which had become the main focus in my life.
In February of 2004 I was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia and underwent a five hour operation to remove fluid from my left lung and cheesy tissue from that area. The biopsy report was negative but perhaps this was the start of mesothelioma. The surgeon told me that it was an adherence of the lung to the chest wall from many years ago when a rib was taken for grafting in my back surgery. It was a slow recovery, but I was still able to enjoy the last year of junior golf. When my youngest son finished his high school golf season in October, I became very unhappy. Within a few months I didn’t feel like getting out of bed and became very depressed. I also had a hernia operation in December. It seemed as if I always was in some kind of pain.
During the winter months I slept in, sometimes till noon, feeling that my purpose in life had expired. My youngest would be going away to college in August and there didn’t seem to be any reason to go on living. I was very tired and had my blood checked, which showed anemia. In March of 2005 my husband and I visited my internist who diagnosed depression and put me on Cymbalta, which seemed to help. He referred me to a psychologist who had me take the MMNI test but I didn’t feel that she was helping and so I stopped going. But my anemia persisted and in June my internist referred me to a specialist who was both a hematologist and an oncologist.
Over the next three months this oncologist performed a lot of tests and put me on steroids for autoimmune hemolytic anemia but my blood levels didn’t seem to improve. My platelets were always low. Finally in September he ordered a cat scan, which showed a mass on my left lung. He thought it might be lymphoma and ordered a bone marrow biopsy and a needle biopsy, both of which were negative. I was beginning to become tired of needles and painful tests. Then the surgeon was called in again to take tissue for biopsy. This was a two-hour operation but the results puzzled our local pathologists who worked for ten days without a clear-cut diagnosis. They sent the slides to the Mayo Clinic and overnight the diagnosis was mesothelioma. Our surgeon had read about promising results of a surgical method performed by Dr. David Sugarbaker who is at Harvard Medical School and works out of Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He said that Dr. Sugarbaker’s results were the best of any in the world and that is where he would take his wife if she had this cancer.
So in October I had a consult with Dr. Sugarbaker who confirmed the diagnosis of mesothelioma and did a mediastinal biopsy, which was negative. I scheduled for surgery in December. Dr. Sugarbaker and team performed an extrapleural pneumonectomy, removing my left lung and pleura, and bathed the cavity with heated Cisplatin for one hour. I spent most of December in Boston and developed a blood clot in my lung, which they decided to dissolve with Coumadin.
When I returned to my home in Cincinnati, I was not feeling well and soon had to be admitted to a local hospital for C-diff infection of my digestive system. I had tremendous pain, nausea, diarrhea, and lost a lot of weight. I wondered why God was punishing me so much. After I got out of the hospital, the C-diff came back and I was readmitted. This lasted into February.
Later that same month I returned to Boston for the follow-up review. They said that everything looked good and I should return in four months. I met with the medical oncologist at Dana-Farber and he established the protocol for chemotherapy, which we decided would be done in Cincinnati. Due to scheduling difficulties, we did not have the chance to meet with the radiation oncologist at Dana-Farber.
I began chemotherapy (Cisplatin and Alimta), full strength, on March 7 but had terrific nausea and my weight went down to 80 pounds. I was readmitted for three days in the hospital for fluids. I became very depressed that this treatment had become so painful and that I could barely walk around, growing tired and out of breath because I had only one lung. The C-diff set me back considerably but this chemo was just as bad. I told the oncologist that I didn’t want anymore of the chemotherapy, even though the protocol called for five rounds.
But he talked me into taking a less toxic drug (Carboplatin) and cutting the dose into thirds, applied once a week over three weeks. (The normal dose is once every three weeks.) After the third chemo, my back became swollen around the tips of the Harrington rods and chemo had to be stopped, due to a skin infection. A neurosurgeon surgically cut the tips of the rods back and a plastic surgeon repaired the skin to cover this site. This was another setback for me, delaying the chemo and causing more pain.
I continued with three more treatments of chemo that ended late in May. My eating was poor because nothing tasted good to me and my weight was down to 80 pounds (normally I weigh about 100). I was trying my best but this was becoming very difficult. The PET scan showed a residual spot of the cancer on my diaphragm and a new recurrence of cancer along an incision line in my back. While this was not good news, I still had radiation therapy as the final step in this three-part treatment.
I started thoracic radiation here in Cincinnati on June 19. I had nausea and vomited five times on June 25, but I am going to try to continue the radiation as long as I can. The protocol calls for 30 treatments over six weeks. I’ve also had constipation and gas pain, which reminded me of the c-diff infection. I also still have some nausea and headaches and sometimes have trouble breathing.
Conclusion (Susie was too sick to continue with writing her story. It is as follows)
Extensive radiation treatment continued through the summer of 2006 with many unfortunate side effects, which included weight loss (down to 75 pounds) that required daily intravenous TPN feedings for several weeks, nausea, chronic pain, major fatigue, and lack of appetite. Towards the end of the summer, Susie required oxygen through a nasal cannula in order to feel fully oxygenated. This worsened over time until she kept on the oxygen all day long. Swelling developed in her legs so that she began taking Lasix daily.
Scans in the middle of October revealed the two residual spots of meso to be about the same but a lesion showed up on the liver. Biopsy proved that this was only a cyst. She became extremely excited at this good news. But unfortunately she was too weak to accompany her husband on a four-day vacation to Maine as was planned to celebrate the end of the therapy protocol.
As winter began, it became harder for her to go outside because of the coldness. She became a virtual hermit, chained to the oxygen as her lung performance decreased, and stayed in her home most days. Scans at the end of December were again positive and this cheered her up, even though she began to feel that it was harder to breathe.
By mid-January her mental sharpness was diminishing and she became forgetful of simple things. On January 18 her oncologist admitted her to the hospital for routine fluid replacement and intravenous feeding. However, after taking a cat scan, her breathing was so labored that she was intubated and placed in the ICU section for critical nursing care. Her C02 level was extremely high, showing her lack of lung function as her lungs and chest wall had become stiff. This high blood level of C02 was responsible for her irrational speech. For three consecutive days, doctors tried to take her off the ventilator but she could not breathe on her own. With a grim prognosis and no hope of recovery, her family decided to turn off the machine and allow her to die painlessly and in dignity. She died, aged 56, on January 24, 2007.
As an inspiration for the research that this foundation is based on, her life will help many others to recognize the many health consequences of sexual abuse and will hopefully motivate other survivors to change their stars by preventing disease, rather than succumbing to it.