I'm the mother of Katie B. Thank you all for the support and encouragement you gave Katie over the last 18 months. Your specific suggestions and general moral support helped her cope and gave her hope. Your generosity in sharing your amazing stories is humbling.

I want you to know that Katie had a very specific, rare and extremely aggressive form of tongue cancer and that, from what I've read of your stories, what happened to her so quickly should not happen to you. She's part of a very small group of young patients (under 40) with no known risk factors and no HPV component, whose cancers go from the size of a dime to the size of a lime in a matter of weeks. In this subgroup of patients, a recurrence within two years carries a poor prognosis. Katie's recurrence came within two months of finishing her initial treatment.

I want you to know, too, that everything that could have been done under these circumstances was done. Her doctors fought as fiercely for her life as she did herself. They never gave up, and when the tumor stopped responding to treatment, they were trying to prepare her for inclusion in a clinical trial. But this alien beast had a grip on her throat and wouldn't let go. Her pain meds were not changed to morphine and methadone until 10 days before she died, which she did peacefully and painlessly in her childhood home with me.

In the short interval between the end of the first round of treatment and the beginning of the second, she and her husband were able to go on the OCF fund-raising walk (last September), where she was happy to meet some of you, and to talk with ChristineB.

Her memorial service will be held next Sunday, March 16th, and there will be a table set up at the reception, with information on head and neck cancer and on the Oral Cancer Foundation's efforts to and raise funds for research and treatment.

Thank you again for helping Katie. Thank all you brave hearts.
Bless you.

-MamaM