Former student endures more than her share of challenges

As a teacher, you get to know your students and, sometimes, you learn about some of their struggles and hardships. After they’ve moved on from your class, you can’t help but wonder how they’ll “turn out,” what they will do with their lives and how they’ll handle whatever comes their way. You always hope that life turns out great and they contribute good things to society.

One of my former English students at Urbana High School, Sarah Brenner, now 40, has done well, although she has also suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from health issues for much of her life, including diabetes and a rare disease called mastocytosis, which causes an excess of mass cells to produce and wreak havoc to the body’s systems.

Sarah Brenner and me back when she was in school

During her sophomore year at Urbana—a year before she was in my class—she was out on medical leave for much of it because of an issue involving her esophagus, which was eroding away from acid due to not having a working sphincter at the top of her stomach. She was sick multiple times a day for much of her life, but when she turned 15 it became increasingly worse. She had surgery one month before her 16th birthday that improved the situation to where she “just” endures severe nausea and dry heaves every day.

“I still have stomach issues and gastroparesis (a slowing of the digestive process),” she said. “Basically, my entire GI and reproductive system has been marked high risk for cancer due to precancerous cells. And since my systems don’t function normally, they have to go in when there are masses found and do scopes more frequently to do routine biopsies.”

When I met Sarah, she was a student in my English class her junior year and also worked on the student newspaper I advised. She was a good student, the kind you like to have in class who reads the assignments, participates in discussions and makes the connections on how good literature relates to the human condition. And because I believe you learn to write well by writing, I also required students to keep a journal and write at least 250 words a day. Sarah still has hers.

“You always provided detailed feedback,” she told me recently. “While teachers had praised my writing prior to your class, that was the first time I felt like I was having a conversation with anyone about the craft of writing. I had always loved to write, to create and tell stories, but that year I began to believe in my writing abilities. I could see a future in words, to do writing as a career.”

After graduating on time with her UHS class in 2000, despite her medical leave, Sarah majored in journalism at the University of Illinois and worked with me when I was editing the College of Media’s alumni publication at the time. Over the years, Sarah spent time with my family, where my wife and daughters got to know and love her. She even went to Paris with us when we all attended the James Jones Literary Society Symposium, with the likes of Norman Mailer and George Plimpton in attendance.

After college, Sarah did go on to work in communications and marketing, including a stint at PenFed, the third-largest credit union in the country based in Washington, D.C., and its foundation that provides financial relief to veterans through a variety of programs. She also added an MBA from Illinois in 2014.

About six months ago, I learned that she was now facing even more difficult and stubborn health challenges where she hasn’t been able to work in a career she loves and has used up most of her savings to support herself as she tries to keep afloat. 

In Sarah’s case, her work contract ended the very day she first went to the emergency room last April that started this latest, prolonged period of “medical mayhem,” as she calls it. Fortunately, she had made the move to carry private health insurance and has since moved back to Urbana to live with her parents during this time, so at least she has been able to get the care she needs.

Sarah Brenner

With a lifetime of underlying medical conditions no doubt adding to her body’s vulnerability, she had been hospitalized for severe back pain and diabetic ketoacidosis (which is when your blood sugar gets dangerously high), most likely from the steroids she had been taking for the pain. They did an ultrasound, but didn’t find anything conclusive. It wasn’t until two weeks later when the pain was only worsening and a surface wound had developed on her leg that they discovered that, in fact, there was a much more expansive and painful abscess that was taking up about one-third of her body. The infection had made an internal, H-shaped wound about halfway down both of her thighs, across her pelvis and up under her stomach.

“When they did a CT scan to see what we were dealing with,” she said, “I was already septic with necrotic tissue, and they called me into emergency surgery.” 

Since then, she has undergone nearly a dozen more surgeries and tried various therapies and antibiotics to get rid of the infection and close the slow-healing, internal wounds. It’s been a painstakingly long process that isn’t over yet. She also just started eye treatments that are not for the faint of heart to try to help reverse some damage to her sight; she currently has one-third of her vision in one eye. But through it all, she is still that determined fighter I knew her to be years ago, doing all she can to reclaim her quality of life and the ability to work again.

She’s also found a way to use her communication talents to aid her in this time of need. Although she was reluctant to ask for financial help, Sarah started a GoFundMe campaign documenting her medical journey to help pay the bills until she’s well again. It’s called “Sarah’s Medical Mishaps & Mayhem” (click here to visit). I know she appreciates any contributions she can get. She often expresses tremendous gratitude for her medical team, her family and her friends. No matter how harrowing her experiences have been, Sarah tries hard to stay positive and is convinced she will get through them.

“My surgeon was amazing and has been super dedicated to wound care and closure,” she told me. “I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here without him. ... It’s a sobering thought and a lot to be thankful for, despite all the rest.”

As we were corresponding recently for this column, Sarah recalled a time back in high school when I had assigned the class to read an Ernest Hemingway short story called, “A Day’s Wait.” It’s about a young boy who quietly fears he is going to die from fever. The boys in his school in France told him a person couldn’t live with a fever of 44 degrees, and his was 102. But he wouldn’t say anything to his father, nor would he go to sleep. That fear was a feeling Sarah related to more than most of her peers because of the chronic illnesses she had endured to that point. I had the students copy Hemingway’s writing verbatim to see how the narrative was developed.

“I always remember [that] assignment, perhaps especially potent now with my own health woes,” she said. “A short story made long and agonizing by going through that process, truly experiencing the weight of the worries through each word. A great learning moment, not just about writing and words, but about life, as well—how easy it is to become bogged down by the woes we create in our own minds.”

When the boy finally tells his father, he is told the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and ultimately cries with relief and his body relaxes.

Sarah’s challenges are much more real and serious, but I look forward to the day when she can have that same restorative feeling of relief.