Sue Sandahl

January 30,2003

Dear Whirly Girls,

I'm about to write you a letter about a deeply compelling and moving woman named Sue Sandahl.  I hope after reading this you find her as deserving of a Whilry Girl award as I do.

As a young woman in college, Sue was an intelligent, vibrant 21-yr. old just months away from graduation and a wedding to the man of her dreams.  But in the final weeks of class she received what would be the first in a long line of bad news: she had Hodgkin's Disease.  She was too sick to walk across the stage at graduation, but instead she received another chance at life after going through weeks of radiation and chemotherapy treatments that would shave pounds off her body and take her hair.  But she held her head high and enjoyed her wedding day to the fullest, even laughing when her wig flew off while riding the bumper cars at an amusement park on her honeymoon.
After all, the worst was over.  Even though the doctor told her she might never be able to have children, she still had her life and she vowed to live it to the fullest.  Little did she know at the time that the cancer was actually the beginning of a long, rough journey.
 
Fifteen years and three children later, at the tender age of 36, she found herself struggling to climb a flight of stairs and started to notice her heart beating rapidly at the littlest exertion. A test determined that, due to the radiation treatment she received years earlier, her heart was very weak and would need immediate triple-bypass surgery.  Days later, while she lye in intensive care hooked up to what seemed like every machine possible, her young children saw her for what they thought would be the last time.  Many tears were shed.       

Miraculously, she recovered.  Her life would never be the same: regular doctor visits, multiple pills three times a day, regular testing to monitor her heart, etc.  But she held her head high and still vowed to live her life to the fullest.  After all, she had her children, who were still too young to loose their mother.   They needed her and she needed them.  So she never complained and tried to shelter them as much as possible from her troubles, even though they knew what was happening.

Seven more years passed, then more trouble:  Sue found a lump in her side.   She kept it as long as she could from her children, but by now they were old enough to ask questions, old enough to worry, old enough to know the implications of another bout of cancer.  As the family anxiously awaited the results of the test, they prepared for the worst and more tears were shed.  But this time, Sue dodged the bullet.  The lump was benign.  The family breathed a short-lived sigh of relief.

More years passed and the family lived their lives.  Sue and her husband ran their farm and the children grew up, graduating from school and getting jobs in the real world.  But Sue's heart condition was getting worse, along with her liver and kidneys.  This time around, Sue kept her children informed of every test, every result.  After all, they had been through this before and they would help her get through it again.  The news was bad:  Sue needed her damaged heart valves replaced with artificial ones.  At 47-years old, she was about to have a surgery normally performed on an 80-yr. old.  But, as a result of the radiation, chemotherapy and prior heart surgery that had saved her life before, her heart was weak, her major organs scarred and thus not prepared to go through the trauma of yet another major surgery.  It would be very risky.  It would have to be performed by only the best.  

This one she could die from.

Once again, Sue found support in every corner.  Her entire family made arrangements to make the trip to Rochester to be by her side.  And while she lye in the hospital bed waiting to be taken away to surgery, her children, now adults, saw her for what they thought would be the last time.  They consoled her.  They laughed with her.  Many tears were shed.

The surgery turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined.  The family received updates every few hours on her condition and the hospital staff was careful not to raise any hopes of a smooth finish.  At midnight, the surgeon spoke with the family:  Sue was very ill and might not make it off the operating table.  The family prepared for the gravest of situations.  But in what seemed like yet another miracle, she did.  The night was very critical, but she made it through that, too.  

Weeks later, on the day she was to leave the hospital to go home, she had a visitor - a nurse who had been present for the surgery.  She said she simply wanted to meet the woman whom she truly believed was the strongest woman she had ever met.  She also told her that the surgeon who performed the surgery now had a nickname throughout the hospital among the nursing staff:  The Miracle Worker.

Sue recovered from the surgery and her heart even improved over the days and months ahead.  Then, suddenly, in the summer of 2000, she suffered a stroke.  Her family traveled through the night to be by her bedside and stayed with her for weeks until she was in the clear.  Miraculously, no major physical damage was done.  But she would need weeks of occupational therapy to strengthen her brain, for the stroke had stripped her of any cognate logic.  So her children helped her through the worst:  re-learning how to read a phone book, re-learning the names of loves ones, re-learning how to tie her shoes.  Eventually, she recovered all that was lost and came away from it with more inner strength than she had when she went in.  

That was nearly three years ago.  Today, Sue is a thriving 51-yr. old wife and mother of three girls, three son-in-laws, one grandson and another on the way.  You see, this is not a story you should shed tears over.  This is a story about survival.  This is a story about the strongest woman I have always had the pleasure to call my mom.  My name is Megan and I'm the oldest daughter, the one she was never supposed to be able to have.

Will you grant her a Whirly Girl award?  Maybe not - there are others out there who, God forbid, have probably been through worse.  But is she deserving of recognition for all the pain, recognition for her strength and diligence, recognition for her unwavering bravery and faith in God?  You betcha.  And her family recognizes it every single day.

Megan Pike