[at-l] Rosie news #3

[lpatton@mailer.fsu.edu (Linda Patton)]

Date: 21 March 2001
To: AT-L, ALDHA list, PATH list, WomenHikers list
Re: "Maine Rose" (Beverly Hugo)
 
Candy Alper, one of Rosie's sisters, called me this morning with the
latest information.  Rosie's children are there--her high school Sr.
son, and her daughter (college freshman(?) who postponed college for
a year to do some world traveling).  Rosie remains in the hospital.  
She is feeling OK and has no pain right now.  But the biopsy results 
show that the tumor is a virulent and aggressive form of brain cancer.  
Right now the doctors give her 6 to 9 months to live, with 9 months 
being very optimistic.

The family has located an expert at Massachusetts General Hospital 
in Boston and Candy is being limo-ed there today to take the biopsy
slides and consult with this doctor and see what could be done with
proton radiation or other treatment.  This is a way of getting radiation 
to the tumor area while sparing surrounding tissue.  The doctor in 
Boston may have a different view of the prognosis, so of course 
there's hope that he might think she has more than 6-9 months.

They don't know where Rosie will be on Saturday, her birthday--whether
she will still be in Maine, or will have been moved to Boston.  So Candy
says hold up on the "Roses for Rosie" campaign.  We may have to do it
on a later date.  She will let me know, when things get settled.

Here in Tallahassee my EYES see banks of colorful azaleas with fluffy 
white clouds of dogwoods overhead.  But my HEART sees a bleak landscape of
black earth with tree skeletons to the horizon, a looming dark sky overhead,
and the whole blasted by cold, bitter wind.  I just can't imagine a world 
without the inspiration that is Rosie.  This is just one of the stages of 
grief I'll have to live through, and I would suffer the same for so many 
of you wonderful folks I've come to know and love in the last few years.

	--eArThworm

Linda L. Patton, Reference Librarian, Strozier Library, Florida State Univ.
      Tallahassee, FL 32306-2047 (850)644-5019 lpatton@mailer.fsu.edu
          "A world without wilderness is a cage." -- David Brower