Helen D.  Hall

Feb 8, 1948 – Apr 20, 2003 (Easter Sunday)

One fall day in October 1994, my mom was traveling back to Texas from seeing my eldest sister in Oklahoma.  She was traveling with my baby sister.

When she didn’t return home when expected, my step father set out to find her.  This was before the big cell phone explosion, so they were all alone.  My step father travelled all over from Amarillo, TX to somewhere inside Oklahoma on I-40.  He ended up finding her sleeping in her truck at a rest stop.  My baby sister, needless to say, was a little concerned.  My mom just said she was tired and needed to sleep.

They got her back to Amarillo and to a doctor.   They took her in for exploratory surgery.  They found LMS in the soft tissue of her intestines.  They removed all they could find and put her on a chemo and radiation treatment.  The docs in the panhandle of TX had only heard of one other case in the area.  The docs had no idea if chemo and radiation would help.  My mom agreed to the treatment because what else could she do at the time.  She was not a quitter and there was a definite fight.

Her LMS was in remittance until 2001.  During the time of remittance, my mom went back to her normal lifestyle with regular checkups with the oncologist.

When her oncologist told her that this dragon was back, she said okay, when is the surgery?  They set a date, and were moving towards it.  One morning early, my mom was complaining of severe abdominal pain.  Again, my baby sister was with her, and took her to the emergency room.

They took her in for surgery.  They found that one of the cells had ruptured, this was her pain, and that there were literally millions of new cells that could not be completely removed.  The doctors did the best they could at removing all the sarcoma they could find.  They closed her up.

When she was able, they told her that was all they could do for her, surgically.  The timeframe was November 2001.  They gave her 14 months.

Unfortunately, my mom accepted this information and this verdict.  She forced us all to accept it. 

She struggled to live a normal life from that day forward and said goodbye to her family and loved ones.

Dee was an angel on Earth.  God touched the life of so many people through my mother.  Countless people were ministered to by mom either in her hairdressing chair or at the local grocery store.  Her faith never faltered, and I thank God for giving me her as my mother.

Please post this in your LMS Angels section, as Dee is my mom, my friend and my hero, but more importantly she is an angel to all who have ever known her.