Ashleigh Range

As I mentioned previously, my vacation 'beach reading' consisted of reading blogs about breast cancer. A lot of them don't have a happy ending, or are headed toward what is obviously not going to be a happy ending. Some of them are insanely funny, some insanely informative, some insanely sad, and some all of the above. Of course, anyone can start a blog, for free, so buyer beware. The only requirement I have for the blogs that I follow is that they be well-written, but most importantly, very real. In the Internet age, I can read about any medical description of a procedure and even watch a video of it being done on YouTube, but the reason I read blogs is because I want to know what it's REALLY like, from a person who has actually been through it or is currently going through it. I want to laugh and cry and be like OMG I can totally relate! and feel like the blogger put into words the things I'm feeling but just can't express. 'Real' is usually some combination of informative, funny, and sad, all at the same time. Of course, none of this is OMG HAHA FUNNY, but as a friend recently wrote me, It's horrific. I really think you have to laugh for crying. And then maybe a good cry anyway.

At any rate, during my Googling spree in Florida, I came across a blog by a woman, Ashleigh Range, with metastatic breast cancer. I was immediately sucked in, and maybe that wasn't the best thing, especially since in reading through the whole blog (which I stayed up two nights in order to do), I understood the grim reality that most people feel fairly optimistic at the time of their first diagnosis. Very few people are terminal from the get-go. Though, to be fair, as far as breast cancer goes, Ashleigh's diagnosis was fairly grim from the beginning; it was a rare type of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer, which is at least Stage III by definition, because what causes the 'inflammation' is cancerous cells clogging up the lymphatic system. So IBC patients are thrilled to have a Stage III, versus Stage IV/terminal, diagnosis. Hers was also triple negative, which in Breast Cancer Land is not a good thing, because there currently aren't great treatments for triple negative breast cancer.

Despite Ashleigh's cancer being as different from mine as possible in terms of breast cancer, and despite the fact that we are obviously extremely different types of people (a lot of her blog is about God and Jesus and her absolute, unwavering faith), I was immediately drawn in. Each entry is so well-written and heartfelt, that I can feel the absolute amazingness of Ashleigh and her husband radiating from each entry. But still, it is very real. Amazingly optimistic, yet real. Although she and her husband are very up front about the fact that they believe in miracles and believe in a God who can and does grant personal miracles, and that prayer increases the odds of a miracle, they have never been in denial about the fact that Ashleigh was likely going to die. At age 30. With a two-year-old and a one-year-old.

And she did die. Yesterday. But I read it on her blog this morning, and I won't lie, I cried. I cried more than I have cried over my own diagnosis and all that has followed. It seems ridiculous, crying over the passing of a complete stranger, when people all over the world die horrible deaths for no earthly or (in my opinion) divine reason. Ann Silverman, another of my favorite bloggers, writes about coping with the death of someone you didn't 'really' know but yet cared about deeply here: http://www.butdoctorihatepink.com/2015/03/rip-lisa-bonchek-adams.html. Apparently trying to mourn the loss of an 'Internet only' friend or even someone you just knew through a blog is difficult territory, uncharted in even this 21st century age of the Internet. In a way, it can be harder than losing a 'real life' friend because there aren't real protocols in place for losing people you never met in the flesh, and people think you're crazy if you do.

Ashleigh's husband's words today embody why this is a couple whose blog draws in complete strangers. He wrote:

We Christians use a lot of platitudes to describe death; phrases that, despite their underlying truth, become saccharine and trite in how they seek to make death's reality and apparent finality more palatable.  "She went home"; "she went to be with Jesus"; "She passed away"; I've even heard "graduation day" used to describe this.  I was there in the room, so let me be perfectly clear: she died. 

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? -1 Corinthians 15:55 

The use of this passage at funerals has always struck me as slightly misguided.  Where is death's sting?  It's right. here.  I'm feeling it's sting as I try to make arrangements, answer a hundred "how are you doings?", and most of all when I sit down with my two-year-old and try to explain how it is that mommy can love him very very much but that she won't be here with us any more. How hard she fought to stay with us.  How even though she was very sick, now she is all better.  How she is in heaven with Jesus.

So this morning I cried. A lot. Maybe some of those tears were for my own uncertain future, but despite the fact that I didn't know her and only discovered her blog a few weeks ago, Ashleigh Range's death had a huge impact on me. It's that 'real' side of blogging that keeps me reading blogs. What a terrible, terrible loss of a really incredible individual. And I write this knowing that some of you will understand this. Some of you who read this I know only through the Internet, yet we have 'known' each other over 15 years, since before I was married and way before I had kids. Before you were married and had kids. Before you even graduated from high school. You are dear friends to me.

RIP Ashleigh, and I pray with all my heart for her widower Brad, and her two young sons, ages two and one. This breast cancer stuff, it sucks. It really, really sucks.