Hi everyone,

This is Deirdre, Eileen's big sister.  First I want to thank you all for reading my sister's blog.  She really enjoyed writing in her Xanga and she derived a lot of support from this community.  People need people.  What is worse than the feeling of being alone?  Xanga was special to my sister because of the friends she made through it.

Eileen passed away on January 12, 2007.  She had a very difficult time with the bone marrow transplant.  After the initial terror (she wrote about it in April of 2006), she was very weak.  By August and September of 2006 she was finally gained some strength and mobility.  But we never really caught a break because she was diagnosed in November with an illness related to the transplant, graft vs host disease.  The drugs to combat GVH exhausted Eileen.  She was sleeping almost all day by December.  I used to read to her when she woke up and I sat next to her when she slept.  Eileen tried very hard and managed to stay awake for most of Christmas day.  It was wonderful but I knew that she was getting worse.  On January 2, Eileen woke up with an infection.  We rushed to the hospital and the doctors fought for her as hard as they could but complication after complication arose.  Eileen and I last spoke on the morning of January 4th.  She talked to me about her older brother James, who died shortly after he was born.  We used to say that baby James was an angel for our family and Eileen said that he was in the room.  She was very calm and unafraid.  Eileen peacefully fell into a coma later that morning. 

Eileen was buried in the church our parents were married in.  She lies there with her grandfather and her uncle.  Eileen and I said that we would get married in that church and she thought it was the most beautiful place on earth.  Our relatives met us at the airport in Ireland and our cousins walked alongside the hearse to my grandmother's house.  The church was so full at the funeral that people had to stand outside.  Eileen managed to touch people that she had never met and inspire people a continent away.

The support the Brazil family received during the funeral and afterwards was incredible.  As I said before, people need people.  The fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of dying alone.  Eileen was my little princess and, without her, I am living without my heart.   

She asked me not to read her Xanga because she wanted a place where she could voice her fears and irritations without censure.  Thank you so much for giving her this platform.  The eulogy I wrote for Eileen’s funeral is below this note.  Also, I attached a picture of the church were Eileen is buried.  It is a beautiful place in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. (http://www.holycrossabbey.ie/holycrosshome.htm).

 - Deirdre

Eileen's Eulogy

I would like to thank you for coming here today.

Eileen was my younger sister and my best friend.  I loved her more than anything else in the world.

Before Eileen was diagnosed, she wanted to be an actress.  She was an Epi fencer on the high school fencing team.  She made her friends laugh and a very good looking boy had a crush on her.  Eileen loved being a high school freshman and she woke up happy.  By the world’s standards, Eileen, a beautiful fifteen year old full of energy and promise, had it all.

And along came the cancer.

Eileen lived to be nineteen and she fought for almost five years.  In all that time, she never had a true remission.  At times, it felt like we were always in the hospital, listening quietly as her odds diminished from small to slim to impossible.

But Eileen just smiled.  She rarely complained and she never gave in to asking “why me”.  She told me once that she didn’t complain because she had too much else to say.  She made the best of every moment.  In our darkest moments, we had God. And Eileen always looked forward with her true blue eyes for better times to come.

There is a saying that ‘if you have your health, you have everything’.  Well, Eileen did not have health.  She was too sick for school.  A surgery impaired her ability to walk.  Chemotherapy stole her beautiful black hair and every year brought fresh scars to her body.  By the world’s standards, Eileen did not have much.  By God’s, she had it all.

She had a wonderful group of friends. They used to play board games in our living room and used to keep the whole house awake with their laughter.  Eileen’s friends always stood by her. Even when she died, they were waiting in a room close by.

When Eileen became too sick to travel, a stream of Irish cousins, aunts and uncles visited her in America.  Eileen loved Ireland and she looked forward to these visits with great joy.

Eileen had her family.  Her mother never left her side and her father would walk to the end of the earth for Eileen’s smallest need.  We, her brothers and sisters, sat with her and spend mornings, afternoons and nights taking.  As a family we stuck together and by staying together, we beat disease.

I never realized that there was so much kindness in the world.  The idea that people all the way in Ireland were praying for her was a great comfort for my sister.  We have always been grateful for the many prayers that were said for us and the many kind thoughts that were sent our way.

In the last weeks of my sister’s life, she grew very tired.  She passed away on January 12, 2007.  The sun shone into the hospital room from the river outside the building.  She was surrounded by her family, her doctors and her priest.  After years of fighting, the end came peacefully and painlessly.  It was a death fitting for an angel. 

Our older brother James died shortly after he was born.  One of the last things my sister said to me was that she wanted to see baby James.  Eileen is in heaven now with her Granddad Caesar and Granddad Brazil and of course baby James.  I know that Eileen looking down at us now, awaiting the day where she will welcome us all with joy.  Until then, we will miss her.

Currently Reading Slaughterhouse-Five : Or The Children's Crusade, A Duty Dance With Death (25th Anniversary) By Kurt Vonnegut see related

On December 27th, 2005, I received a bone marrow transplant from my brother, Philip. His marrow was a perfect match with my marrow, a ten out of ten. Everything down to our T-cells were a match. On paper, the transplant looked perfect. But I ended up getting very, very sick.

It started with breathing problems. I was breathing on my own, but every breath was a struggle. A scan revealed fluid surrounding my lungs, and I had mini-chest tubes put it to drain the fluid. This worked, but not as well as the doctors hoped it would. There was discussion of putting an actual chest tube in, and then it was discovered I had stopped urinating. My kidney's had failed. And, at this point, I wasn't myself. I was still able to communicate somewhat, but I wasn't all there. My sister said that my left eye would be looking in one direction and the right eye would be looking somewhere totally different. I was so sick at this point that the doctors sent me over to the ICU in the hospital across the street. Being "sent across the street" is a bad thing. That means that things are deadly serious.

I don't remember being transferred to the new hospital. In fact, I don't remember the first two and a half weeks there. From what I hear, that's for the better. I had to be put on a respirator for a few days, I had a breathing tube inserted into my nose (which I pulled out), I was on dialysis (I pulled that out too), wires and needles going in everywhere (some of which I pulled out), my heart rate became so abnormal that I had to be electro-shocked, and I was thought to be in a deep coma. They had a neurologist come in and scan me, and he accessed that I was in a deep coma and wouldn't come out of it the same person. When he came to tell my mother that the next day, I had actually "woken up" and was communicating somewhat. He later told my mom that based on the scans he took, my recovery is impossible. I shouldn't be the way I am today. He said I should be in a medical journal. Just the type of fame I always wanted, eh?

The point of the previous paragraph was to display two things, I was very sick and very crazy. My family says I was very anxious and twitchy. They had to sit by my bed for a few days, 24 hours a day, and watch my hands. If someone was not giving me their full attention, I would whip my hand out from under a blanket and pull something out of me. My sister said she wanted to just tie my hands down, because it was so tiring watching me all the time, but mom wouldn't let her because she knew it would just make me more anxious and disturbed.

My mind was doing some crazy things of it's own. I was hallucinating big time. I thought that I was in Japan for a while, and I knew I needed to get back to New York for my transplant. I would often wonder to myself why I never needed to go to the bathroom in my hallucination. Of course, that was because I had kidney failure back in reality. I got on plane after plane to try and get back to New York. The first real thing I remember, the thing that shocked me back into reality, was when I pulled out my dialysis catheter. I knew I had done something really bad and I started calling for the nurse. I looked at my hands and they were covered in blood. That's all I could look at, while a bunch of nurses came in and put pressure on my leg, trying to stop the bleeding. I felt terrible because I knew I had caused more trouble for the nurses and doctors. I kept apologizing and crying until my mom and Deirdre washed my hands. I felt better after that.

After all of that, I started to slowly improve. My kidney's started to improve and are now back in working order. God bless anyone who has to go through dialysis. It's tough stuff. I was weak as a newborn, and still have not regained my strength. But that's the least of my worries. If that's the only thing I have to deal with now, thank God. I know that my strength will come back. I could have had (or still get) a host of other issues. I can deal with being weak.

I started writing in an actual book while in the hospital. And I've taken to it. I don't think I'll write in here again. I think this is a good ending, though. Despite the set backs, my bone marrow transplant was a success. My marrow is now Philip's marrow. So, for my last entry, I can say I am cured. We'll end it like that. I'm cured.

I'm not dead...

More on that later, when I'm up to it.

Currently Reading Hocus Pocus By Kurt Vonnegut see related

Anyone watch Celebrity Fit Club?

Has anyone ever written on a laptop before? Haha, don't take that question seriously. I am aware that the good majority of you have written on laptops before, and some of you probably use laptops for all of your computer related needs. This is my first time actually hardcore using a laptop, and I don't like it. The keys aren't right. They don't fit into my fingers the way my old keyboard at home does. There is something not right about these keys. I have had to use the backspace button approximately 325 times since starting this entry. I like to be neat and use capitalization and try to use that crazy thing called grammar correctly. I just feel like these buttons don't want me to do that. Maybe my fingers are too fat or something. I'll be the first to admit that I have chubby little fingers. Do you think they make laptops for people with fat fingers? They make a shoe for people with fat feet. (Which I also have, by the way.) They make a phone for people with terrible eyes. (I also have that phone, it has buttons that are the size of silver dollars, but that is for my dad not me.) The point of all of this is, I suppose, to be nice to people with fat fingers. They really are people, just like you.

Every season they have a former drug addict that returns to their drug addictions during the show.

Here's a brief look at how I am doing. Yesterday I received the actual transplant, which is referred to as Day 0. Today is Day 1, and so on and so on. I feel sick to my stomach all the time and I cannot eat without vomiting. I had two M&M's yesterday and I threw both those little babies up. I cannot eat anything! Other than that, I feel fine. I can get medication for the nausea, which helps for a while, but not as long as I would like. That's the deal so far. More exciting updates to come, next time with added smell!

Celebrity Fit Club just wants to tape some drug addicts.