My 28 year-old daughter had to leave us13 years ago. It’s still so painful.

hrubin51

(I also posted this in a reply to a woman whose husband developed Wilms tumor)

Hello, I am a retired physician; now in a second marriage, after my first wife of 38 years left 2 years after the death of our daughter, Miriam. Her departure was also devastating. 

Miriam was a freshman in high school, age 15, when she was diagnosed with Wilms tumor, a kidney tumor usually occurring in toddlers, usually successfully treated with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Teenagers who get Wilms have a poorer outcome.

Miriam was a wonderful person - unique in many ways - a top student, creative, participated in athletics, took to family outdoor activities like backpacking and kayaking trips, and was loved by everyone she met. She had a remarkably accepting personality and ability to adapt to any circumstance. She was somehow able to listen to anyone and understand who they were. I think she even understood me better than anyone else in the world, and I understood her. This, and her bravery, served her well over the next 13 years during which she triumphantly survived the cancer's relentless advance. 

Miriam had the standard treatments, but kept having relapses, metastases from the original tumor, many, and had multiple courses of chemotherapy, radiation. And a stem cell transplant, which didn’t do it. When her bone marrow could no longer tolerate the negative impact of chemotherapy, she underwent surgery after surgery, (some of them very major (removal of sections of her lung or spinal vertebrae, removal of metastases near the heart) to remove recurrences wherever they occurred. 

By the age of 28, when she was so worn out that she was finally unable to go on. I'd say she'd had more treatments and more surgeries than most 70 or 80 year old patients I knew when I was in practice. She left this world 13 years ago, February 23, 2012.

Miriam NEVER gave up. She always wanted more life. And after every recurrence and treatment, she worked on her recovery, and quickly resumed her life where she had just taken a medical detour. She graduated high school second in her class despite having spent months in the hospital, she went to one of the top liberal arts colleges in the US in Massachusetts and graduated in 5 years. Miriam worked full-time up until 2 moths before she died; and Miriam married, one of her life goals. She continued to hike and cross-country ski when possible. She amazed her caregivers by her attitude and survival when they said most others would have been unable to persevere. She wanted more life. Miriam loved life. 

Miriam and her sister, Ilana, were also each other's best friend, and they had planned to live close to one another and raise their families together - a dream which disappeared. 

My loss of my daughter, Miriam, is still so painful, but my greatest struggle throughout, and to this day, was watching and remembering how Miriam suffered - the pain, losing her strength, her physical resilience, abilities, hopes, dreams, seeing her friends move ahead in life, slowly losing the life and future she loved, knowing it would come to an end too soon, although she persisted as if that would not occur. 

I think about her many times every day still, often with tears in my eyes. I could not smile or hum a tune for over a year after she passed away. I still have distressing memories of her treatments, including a stem cell transplant, and things she said, and an occasional fleeting look in her eyes. Sometimes I call it "the never-ending end of Miriam." She was a unique and beautiful human being. I love her so, so much.

Miriam's Dad, 

Hal Rubin

hrubin51