Alicia Parlette faces final stages of journey
Courtesy of Shirley-Anne Owden
Alicia Parlette, who has decided to end treatment for cancer, enjoys a gathering with friends last month in San Francisco.
Surrounded by her favorite things - her rescue dog, Clarabelle, a 1960 edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird," her scrapbooks and her stuffed Baby Bear, San Francisco writer Alicia Parlette is saying her goodbyes to family, friends and her new fiance as she enters the final chapter of her battle with cancer.
She is 28 years old.
Her memoir, "Alicia's Story," is a rich examination of love and faith tested by incurable disease and told through the journey of a young woman who had just begun her career as a copy editor for The Chronicle when she found out in 2005 she had a rare form of cancer in her hip and breast called alveolar soft part sarcoma. Fewer than 200 new cases appear in the United States each year.
She got the news three years after her mother died of cancer.
Her 17-part newspaper series was later turned into a book and drew tens of thousands of followers from around the world who said reading about Alicia's triumphs and setbacks helped them handle their own tragedies with grace.
In the early morning hours of April 2, Parlette went to the emergency room and was admitted into the hospital with debilitating pain in her hip and increased breathing problems. The tumors in her lungs had grown to the point where she could no longer breathe on her own. Days later, she was moved to the intensive-care unit, where X-rays revealed a hip fracture. Doctors told her the tumor had degraded too much of the bone in her femur and hip; surgery was not an option. It was time, they said, to start saying goodbye.
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