Jenny's Birthday

Tonight my brother telephoned to ask if this was the month of my birthday or our sister Jenny's birthday. I told him he'd missed my birthday, it was last Tuesday, January 13th. He then remembered, "Oh yes, you were born on Friday the thirteenth, that was a lucky day".
Our beautiful sister Jenny would have been 47 this Thursday, January 29th, if she had lived.
We miss her terribly and her story is very sad.
Jenny was the youngest of the four children in our family. We all adored the blond, blue- eyed little girl. She loved sports and was very popular. She was always happy, making people laugh, and finding humor in everything. Jenny was elected the wittiest girl in junior high school.
In 1985 Jenny married the love of her life, Danny. When she was 27 (1989) she found lumps in her neck and under her arm. She did not give much attention to the occurrence until she started getting very tired and sleeping alot. She attributed all of this to working full time and carrying for her 3 yr and 9 month old children.
One day she fainted at work and went to the hospital. There, she was informed that her blood showed "something like Leukemia".
Our mother quickly made her an appointment with a reputable oncologist at St. Thomas Hospital and Jenny was diagnosed with fast and slow growing Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The cancer tumors were everywhere including her lungs and spleen. The spleen was reported to be the size of a basketball and had to be surgically removed.
Jenny began chemo-therapy for the stage 4 cancer. Her physician said, "we will keep you alive as long as we can with chemo. Hopefully something else will come along that will save your life."
About two years later something else did come along and Jenny received a self harvesting Stem-Cell Transplant. This harvesting process was very lengthy. It took eight days instead of 8 hours to harvest enough healthy white blood cells from her to treat and transplant back to her.
In 1992 Jenny went into remission. We thought everything would be OK, but there were many side effects from the stem cell treatment. In 1994 our brother Mike died and in 1998 Jenny's husband, the father of her children died as the result of a car crash.
From 1989 until 2007 Jenny enjoyed and suffered all the events and experiences of her life. She tried to be positive and prayed she would live to see her children graduate from high school. She did live for 18 years in failing health. She told our mother, "I wish I had asked God for a little more time". On August 4th 2007 Jenny died. She went to sleep and did not wake up. We suspect there may have been a blood clot or her heart just stopped beating.
Jenny's children had reached the ages of nineteen and twenty two. Grown in some ways, but mere children in other ways.
Even though we did not get to tell her good bye, we all know she loved us and she knew we loved her and would do anything for her.
Without the stem-cell transplant, Jenny would not have lived to see her children grown. The quality of her life was not great and the lives of her children and the rest of our family were profoundly impacted.
Because of the time the Stem Cell Transplant allowed our family to have with Jenny, I am an advocate of stem-cell research. Imagine how wonderful it would be if the Stem-Cell Transplant could be improved and benefit the recipient's quality of life.
I am also firm in my "pro-life" convictions. Never should an abortion occur to harvest stem cells.
Missing Jenny,
Grace