Everybody knew this day was coming. We’d get up and read “Mandi Schwartz, 1988-2011.”
So there was no shock when she passed away Sunday, not after what she’d been through. There is just the standard struggle to make some sense of it all.
If ever a story deserved a happy ending, it was this one. By now millions of people are at least vaguely familiar with Mandi’s tale. She was the Yale hockey player stricken with acute myeloid leukemia.
She needed a stem-cell transplant to survive. Mandi’s brother was the first-round pick of the St. Louis Blues last summer, and the search for a donor became a rallying cry throughout the hockey community.
The drama culminated in Seattle last fall. That’s where the girl from the small Canadian prairie town of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, went for her transplant. I was fortunate enough to visit when her family gathered for a Thanksgiving celebration.
“Having a transplant is like someone sending you to hell and telling you to crawl back,” her mother, Carol, told me.
Mandi kept crawling. That was her style, even if all the attention it got her was not. Bundled in a sweats and ski cap she had become the gentle face of a grand crusade.
There were so many people writing her and praying for her and wishing for that happy ending. Being Mandi, I wondered if she worried about letting them down. Just getting through each day was stressful enough.
“I never thought I was that popular,” she said.
It wasn’t false humility. Everybody who knew her said the same thing.
Mandi was as smart and worked as hard as anybody. But unlike so many athletes we admire these days, she never made a point of it.
She was first diagnosed with cancer in 2008, after her usual Energizer Bunny stamina deserted her on the ice. She spent 130 day in the hospital; they thought the cancer was licked.
Mandi returned to Yale. She was still too weak to play full-bore hockey, but she was the first one in the weight room. When teammates asked how she was doing, she’d immediately turn the question back on them.
That’s why they rallied around her for Round Two. The cancer returned and the only cure was a stem-cell transplant. With her Ukrainian-Russian heritage, finding the right DNA match was going to be a problem.
The Yale community embraced the challenge. Her teammates had fund-raisers and donor drives. Friends in Canada made it almost a national cause.
Two suitable blood-cord donors were eventually found. They weren’t perfect DNA matches, but they would have to do. The plan was to irradiate her old immune system out of existence, then grow a totally new one from the new cells.
The operation was Sept. 22. Then came the near-death lung infection, the bloating from 35 new pounds of water weight, the hallucinations.
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He’d proposed with a bouquet of balloons last year. Mandi was in intensive care at the time. Through thick and thin, they were going to stick together.
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| Jaden Schwartz drafted with the Blues |
Both star for Colorado College, which recently upset defending national champ Boston College in the NCAA hockey tournament. The family liked what it was seeing out of Mandi that holiday.
"You feel like she’s got life again,” said her father, Rick.
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| Rylan Schwartz plays for Colorado College |
She showed up at practice with cookies and did a little coaching. Back at Yale, her teammates had adopted a 9-year-old girl who was recovering from a brain tumor.
Giana Cardonita was the team’s Minny Mandi. The real one hoped to meet her this fall. She’d started reading her old accounting textbooks, knowing she needed to get her brain back in Ivy League shape. She planned to get married this summer.
Then the biopsy results came in. The cancer had returned. Medical science was out of answers.
The family packed up and headed back to Wilcox.
“We ask for your support in prayer as we treasure our time with her at home,” her family wrote in a CaringBridge online posting.
Jaden played for Canada in the World Junior Championship. He broke his ankle, which probably cost Canada the title. When he returned home in January, he limped off the plane and put his silver medal around Mandi’s neck.
Back at Yale, the Mandi Schwartz Marrow Donor Registry Drive will go on as planned April 21. There is no explaining death so young, but things like that provide a clue.
Through the Mandi-inspired drives, almost 5,000 new names are registered as stem-cell donors. There’s no telling how many lives that might save.
Then there are the hundreds of told and untold stories, the lives she touched. Like little Giana, who was introduced as the team’s newest member at a fund-raising game last fall.
She dropped the first puck and later toured the locker room. There was a locker with her name above it and a jersey hanging inside.
A few stalls down was Mandi’s locker, with a jersey waiting for her return. That miracle never came, and it’s futile to ask why.
All I know is Mandi is finally resting in peace. And don’t worry, girl. You didn’t let anyone down.
Read more and see a video at:
http://aol.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2011-04-04/no-miracle-for-mandi-schwartz-expect-for-the-gift-of-her-short-life?icid=maing-grid7|aim|dl12|sec1_lnk3|54274
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