Edward Torchy Smith
THE FOLLOWING IS A POSTING FROM DENIS BAYER.
Many of you probably remember that our classmate, Marc Brenner has been battling Lymphoma now for over a year. Although, huge strides have been made in fighting this disease, Marc has a particularly aggressive type. He was too sick to attend the 50th reunion, but printed up and donated all those SHS Handbooks that were given out.
Marc went through a great deal of chemotherapy at Cleveland clinic, but the Lymphoma returned. So, he again went through some heavy duty chemo and radiation to prepare for a transplant. On September 10 he had what is called an autologous bone marrow transplant, using his own cells after they have been “cleaned up”. Unfortunately, this too failed. At that point he was put into a clinical trial as his options were running out. It was not successful. He has been very sick and in pain. We had been emailing, but the emails stopped coming and it was very worrisome. I then received an email from his wife telling me about all Marc has been going through. We have emailed back an forth a few time and she has kept me up to date on what is going on. Of course she is overwhelmed and Marc is not in the mood to write at this point.
Today, I received an email from Diane, his wife, telling me that hospice is now involved. She had known this, but wanted to wait until their children were told before letting me know.
Diane set up a Caring Bridge site several months ago to give updates, but she has been so busy with everything that she hasn’t been able to post too often. The site can be accessed by going to caringbridge.org and typing in Marc Brenner.
Marc has put up and amazing and courageous fight! We should all be thinking about him now!
Dennis Bayer
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