Sarah Sadtler Feather, The Carcinista
Sarah Sadtler Feather, also known in the blogging community as The Carcinista, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2006. After five years of treatment, she died at home on Tuesday, May 3, 2011.
To honor and celebrate her life there will be two memorial services, one in the Boston area and in the Philadelphia area. Click here for details.
For those who cannot attend the service there is an on-line memorial at Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer in memory of The Carcinista and all of those we’ve known and lost to cancer — whether we knew them in the virtual world or the corporeal one.
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A poem from Philippa of Feisty Blue Gecko,
Loss
We never actually met
I never saw her face
or heard her voice
except through a strange
unreal, surreal link.
But we shared so much
became firm stranger-friends
bound together by a common
unexpected, uninvited, intruding disease
invading, consuming our bodies
too long undiscovered
too long undisturbed.
We bumped into each other
in this virtual world
Sharing our tears of laughter and fear
Each other’s face, name
Unknown, unfamiliar
Yet holding each other’s hands
while pushed along our medical path
disease and drugs trying,
but unable,
to strip us of dignity.
And then she was gone.
Stolen
Suddenly
Unexpectedly
From her family
From her friends
And from a woman she had never met
Sarah was a lovely person and in my opinion, handled her diagnosis, treatment, and ultimately, her death, with the most grace and bravery I’ve ever encountered. She would have said she was not brave, that she had no choice – but it’s not the truth. She was my friend and I miss her.