My Personal 9/11
The absolute worst day of my entire life…
I have written a lot of about the death of my daughter, and it has infused much of my writing as a physician. The post below was the first about the loss of my daughter. I penned it June 11, 2009…
June 7, 2009 will forever be burned in my memory. June 7, 2009 will always cause me the deepest pain anyone can ever feel. June 7, 2009 will always be the darkest day on the calendar, even if the sun is warm, bright, and plentiful.
June 7, 2009 was the day my wife and I lost our daughter to lymphoma.
She was diagnosed with lymphoma back in January, and it was a shock to all of us. Yet, we were determined to beat this terrible disease with the same ferocity it attacked our beautiful little Angel. So we started the cycles of chemotherapy.
It was a relatively short treatment protocol — six months — but it was quite intense. Our daughter has an underlying disorder, Ataxia-Telangiectasia, which renders her more sensitive to chemotherapy than normal children. Therefore, the protocol was modified in dose for kids with A-T.
But, intense the protocol was. With each cycle, there were complications. After the first cycle, she came back almost a day later with high fevers and low blood cell counts. She stayed a week in the hospital. But…
