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The youth pastor at my home church has a son, Ben, who was diagnosed with a Neuroblastoma almost two months ago. He’s only two years old. It’s sometime been difficult to be so far away from them; not that I could do anything, but I still feel helpless.

Yesterday, Ben began his third round of chemotherapy treatment with a drug called Cisplatin(cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II)).

Ben’s Mom writes in their blog:

While this drug has proven in the past few years to be an extremely important drug in treating NB [Neuroblastoma], it will most likely damage his hearing. 3/4 of all NB kids will suffer hearing loss - the extent to which varies depending on the child. We have been told that the “best case scenario” would be just the loss of high frequency pitches but we won’t know for another six months (approximately) what the ultimate damage has been.

The ototoxicity of…cisplatin may be related to [its] ability to bind to melanin in the stria vascularis of the inner ear or the generation of reactive oxygen species.

I thought about this for a second, and I thought about how I might feel. Giving my son a drug which I know has a good chance of causing him to be disabled, causing him to miss out on parts of life.

Then I thought about the doctors who are researching cancer how hard they must fight everyday to try and develop better, less detrimental, drugs and treatments.

It almost makes me want to be one. Knowing that there is so much good that could be done, so much suffering that could be eliminated.

If I even get bored of engineering, I’d probably become a doctor.

However, I’m not a doctor. There is nothing I can do, save pray.

…we hope for a miracle - that for some reason outside of medical science his ears are protected. Or that whatever loss there may be, it will be minimal. So we ask you to please pray for him. Please.

I’ve been pretty busy this past week, mentally, physically, and emotionally. When I get this busy, my regular habits (for better or for worse) start to drop off. I hold off on checking/responding to email, I let me feeds go unread for days at a time and I pretty much just generally unplug from the world while I deal with what’s at hand (in this case: finals). To give you an idea of how far behind I am, I have 250 emails in my inbox and 828 unread feeds I currently have.

Unfortunately, life goes on; and with life’s continuance, death also continues.

That’s what this post is about. Two great people passed away this week: Marc Orchant and Anita Rowland.

While I had never met Marc in person, I have read his posts online and I know people who have meet him. All indications I have say that he was a kind and caring gentleman who really knew what was going on. Marc suffered massive heart attack about a week and a half ago. While he never regained consciousness, he was reportedly getting better. Around 3pm on Sunday, Marc suddenly passed away.

In contrast, Anita had been battling cancer since 2003. However, her death was also as unexpected as Marc’s. I’m glad I am able to say that I did have the pleasure of meeting Anita several times over the years at the few Blogger Meetups I was able to attend. I remember that Anita was always very kind to me and created a very welcoming environment.

While I will miss them both, I think I find it hardest to watch the people still alive who had a greater connection to Marc and Anita then I did. To see the depth of their sorrow and know that there is nothing I can do to ease it.

TDavid has a nice recounting of his interaction with Marc and Anita.

Chris Pirillo also has a very touching video on YouTube.

However, I think Warner Crocker summed it up best:

From wickedstageact2.typepad.com:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” (Hamlet Act V, scene ii)

Death is a bitch.

Ben recently told me that a casual acquaintance of ours, Sarah Plants, had recently passed away due to cancer. I didn’t know her very well, but saw her quite a bit since she played Ultimate Frisbee on the UW team. Doug, her husband, also lived at Your Mom’s House last year with Ben and Quinn, so she was over quite a bit. I last saw her at Thanksgiving and she seemed very happy.

From thedaily.washington.edu:

Plants, 22, died Feb. 7 of a brain tumor linked to Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, the same rare hereditary disorder that claimed the lives of her father and brother. She was diagnosed with the disorder in October.
…
Plants had survived cancer as a toddler. She suffered from adrenal cortical carcinoma, or cancer of the adrenal gland above the kidney, and went through chemotherapy at 16 months old.
…
Plants was 29 credits short of earning a degree in Public Health. When she died, the University gave her an honorary degree. She had planned to go to graduate school to study nursing.

She was captain of the UW Element women’s Ultimate Frisbee team and the coach of an Ultimate team at Whitman Middle School.

Death is a bitch, cancer even more so.