The Essence of Sara
On September 22nd, 2000, just 15 days before Sara Johnson would marry her high school sweetheart, wedding guests received a letter in the mail that read something like this:
The months that followed Sara’s diagnosis with ALL involved a double port surgery, intense chemotherapy treatments, numerous blood transfusions, a complicated bowel surgery, and days, weeks, and months in isolation on the 8th floor of Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis. Sara now measured her life in minutes, not in years. Her credentials she once had hoped for through her studies at Augsburg College were now written on a clipboard, and included a scheduled protocol of treatments, medication, minute-by-minute IV drips, and special instructions. Her professors were replaced with doctors; her degree in business was now replaced with studying the affects of chemotherapy and the branch of medicine that deals with tumors, including their development, diagnosis, treatment and prevention, commonly called oncology, the study of cancer.
On July 7th, 2001 family and friends attended Sara and Tim’s second wedding celebration, honoring her courage, and celebrating her intense focus on life. Several days later, Sara was back to her strict regimen of chemotherapy and treatments at Fairview Hospital.
Immediately after Christmas 2001, Sara was admitted to the intensive care unit at Fairview Hospital and in March, everyone prayed for positive results as she pre-tested with the bone marrow team at the University of Minnesota. Sara’s ALL percentage was not low enough for a bone marrow transplant and the news was very disappointing. These were not the results she had hoped for.
On May 26th 2002, nearly three weeks after continuous chemotherapy treatments, Sara’s body succumbed to an infection and she was transferred again to the intensive care unit at Fairview Hospital.
It was there that Sara died.
It wasn’t a perfect ending. It wasn’t the life she had hoped for. But Sara understood the whole of her life, not just one little part of it. Through it all – and in a very short 20 months of being diagnosed with her cancer – Sara was riveted at living. She was married not once, but twice. They built a new house together and she kept up her studies at Augsburg College. Sara had only wished the pain she felt was that of her dance shoes. Nothing scared her; not even her cancer. Her warrior spirit was unexplainable, and indescribable. Sara had cried only one time in those two years and that was the news about the possibility that she may not be able to have children.
Cancer prioritized Sara’s life. She did everything any girl would dream of. She had a great family, she was a competitive dancer, she attended college, fell in love and even built a house. Sara felt that life was not always about knowing, but about knowing when to change; taking the moment and making the best of it. And sometimes you are even given the moments to dance.
