My cousin Cyndi sent me a wonderful e-mail, putting to light for the entire family more details on Lisa's death, but also on her life. I thought I'd share the lovely story with the rest of the family.
My Sister LisaBy Cyndi O'mearaLisa and I were typical sisters, we played together when we were young, fought madly during our teenage years and then became lasting friends as we blossomed into adulthood.
Lisa was amazing. She had a mind that wouldn’t stop, she was an avid reader, an endless student and a person who thought very differently and loved to break the rules. Her life was filled with love, adventure and excitement. She loved to travel and she managed to visit every continent on the planet.
When she was 18 she left Bendigo Australia, to study in the USA, to become a Chiropractor, during those 5 years, she played, studied and worked hard. She came home and traveled Australia doing locums, then finally setting up practice in Armadale Victoria. She had a thriving practice and her patients and staff loved her. She was diagnosed with a disease called CREST, an acronym for Calcinosis, raynards phemomon, oesophagitis, scleroderma and talangatalia. The doctors said it was a fatal disease, telling her she would probably only live another 10 years they told her to keep warm and stop smoking and take a bunch of drugs. Lisa didn’t stop smoking, she didn’t take the drugs but decided to move to QLD to keep warm, she also followed a strict diet and had weekly massages and Chiropractic care to keep her tissue soft and supple. It worked because she managed to live another 23 years after that diagnosis.
While in Melbourne Lisa wrote the book ‘Immunity Why Not Keep It”, it was the first of its kind in Australia, warning people about the dangers of vaccination. Now there are a plethora of books on this subject both in Australia and overseas.
Lisa went to South America, just before she moved to Queensland and managed to get hepatitis A, she became very ill, very yellow and very thin. But as always she had a fighting spirit, and came back from what I thought was to be her demise.
She continued to travel, had a thriving business on Bribie Island, taught seminars within the Chiropractic profession and became a mentor to many Chiropractic students and a keen investor for her independence.
Lisa and I were now only 40 minutes from each other and we both depended on each other for many things. Lisa was the person I would always call if I had a difficult question that needed an amazing mind to solve it. She always solved it with simplicity and enabled me to calm down about an issue or to get on with what I needed to get on with. She helped look after my children and was the most amazing Aunt. She always came home from her travels with gifts abounding for all of us. One year for my children’s birthdays she surprised each of them with a unique gift. For Tarnea she flew both of them down to Sydney for the weekend to stay at an expensive motel, see the musical The Lion King and enjoy the sights of Sydney. For Casie and Fran she flew them and herself down to Melbourne to stay at a resort spa and enjoy the luxury of being pampered and for Brogan she flew them both to New Zealand to watch the All Blacks rugby team play. A year they will not forget.
Lisa was generous, that’s an understatement. She would always pay for me whenever we went out for a meal, she did so much.
In 2005, she began to lose weight rapidly and was having difficulty eating, she thought it was the end of her CREST disease and believed the oesophagitis would be her demise. In March 2006 she woke one morning and couldn’t even get water down let alone food, we rushed her to Holy Spirit hospital in Brisbane, where she was put on a drip. She weighed 35 kg, there was nothing of her, and with only saline going into her veins she was losing more and more weight. She looked like a skeleton and I feared so much I was going to lose her. Between Mum, Dad and I we stayed with her in the hospital while tests were done. The wonderful Dr Andrew Lee was her gastroenterologist, he diagnosed an 8 cm tumour on the oesophegas. He recommended radiation and an operation to remove not only the tumour but 10 cm of her oesophegus. Lisa never listens to authority and once again she said she didn’t want to do it. She knew that her quality of life with both treatments would decrease forever and she said she would rather have quality rather then quantity when it came to her life.
We took her home from the hospital with a feeding tube down her nose and into her stomach and we fed her through the tube. We decided to go natural, vegetable juices, whey protein powder, colloidal minerals, ambrotose, essential fatty acids, essiac tea, chicken broths and mushroom extract. We managed to block the tube up a few times experimenting, which was a very scary prospect because there is no other way to get water and food into her.
She lived with Mum and Dad for around 3 months and then got a tube straight into her stomach so that she could walk down the street without everyone looking. She gained weight, got up to 41 kg, went back to work, ran her business and investments and managed to live well. In August of 2006 she flew down to the Mountains and went skiing for the week. The doctors gave her three months and within four she was skiing down the slopes of Mount Hotham. She was amazing! She also started to drink fluids and was able to get some food down, tim tams, friands and chocolate brownies were her favourite, but she also managed to drink smoothies.
All was doing well but then Mum died in the October of 2006 and her slow death as a result of mesothelioma took its toll on Lisa. After Mum’s death Lisa managed to make her way back and started to feel better and have more energy again. Christmas and New Year went and things seemed to be doing fine.
In March she decided she wanted a scan to find out the size of the tumour. It didn’t look good, it still looked the same size in length, but it looked like it was spreading in width. Lisa didn’t see that as a problem, she never saw anything as a problem she was only optimistic about everything.
After Lisa’s diagnosis she started seeing a psychologist, she not only wanted to work on the physical and chemical part of her body but also the mental state. Her psychologist’s name was Jaqueline Trost, an 82 year old amazing lady who worked in Nambour, not far from me. Sometimes Lisa and I would meet at the organic Café Sister to Sister in Palmwoods and talk for an hour, until her appointment. On February the 5th we met there and cried for the hour. A good friend of mine had passed away the day before from Liver Cancer, a secondary to breast cancer, she was 39 years old. The next time we met was the Wednesday before Lisa died, she was energetic, full of life and unstoppable. The owner of Sister to Sister, Hayley joined us for the hour, she had just lost her sister (36 years old) to a brain tumour in the November of 2006. We talked about her sister Rikki, we talked about Lisa and her cancer, and Lisa was vivacious and full of hope for a wonderful future. She hadn’t looked this good or sounded this good since August the year before. It was great to see her with such hope and love of life.
Lisa and I spoke on the Thursday and again on the Friday and both times she said she felt she was back to where she was in August. She told me to touch wood and I told her I’d touched the tree of knowledge, we both laughed. On Saturday we meet in Caloundra and went to the musical The Secret Garden, Lisa looked gorgeous but she told me she was vomiting up a little blood and felt like she hit the wall that morning and wasn’t doing so well. The musical we went to was about spirits living with people and helping them in there every day lives.
On the Sunday morning Lisa called me, but I was in a seminar and I texted her to tell her that I would call her at 1.00 pm when the morning session was over. I called her as soon as I got out but got no reply from her mobile or land line. I thought that was not right and began to worry, but I had a talk to give at 2.00 pm across town so I decided I’d call her when I finished my talk. At 1.55 pm Dad called to tell me that Lisa was in emergency and that she was vomiting up a lot of blood, I told Dad that I would do the talk and get straight to the hospital.
For some reason I knew that for Lisa this set back would be hard for her to come back from. She was getting to the point that she was sick of the set backs and at times didn’t want to fight anymore. I called my good friend Jacki and cried to her believing that Lisa wouldn’t want to fight this.
I got to the emergency room of the hospital and was immediately bombarded with nurses and doctors asking me to make a decision. Apparently the tumour had encroached on a major blood vessel and the bleeding didn’t seem to want to stop. There were two choices: One was to stabalize her and send her to Brisbane to the specialists. The other was to wait and see. I called a very good friend who is an upper gastro surgeon and spoke to him, I then called Lisa’s specialist Dr. Andrew Lee and talked to him also. He felt that if Lisa was operated on that her chances of survival were slim.
With all the information I went back to Lisa where Dad was sitting beside her, he looked as lost and worried as was I. I grabbed Lisa’s hand and told her I loved her and that she had been the best sister, she looked me in the eye and said “Am I dying?”, I then said to her that she was bleeding and we couldn’t stop the bleeding. She then said to me “I’m tired and I’m ready to go”.
We took her out of emergency and into a private room where Lisa was hooked up to morphine and blood. She had started to experience pain and she felt if she was going to die that she might as well enjoy it and be comfortable. She had an amazing attitude.
I grabbed her hand and talked to her, telling her how much I loved her and that I was going to miss her. She asked me to call Trent.
Before calling Trent, I called Marcus. I called him at 7.00pm and told him that Lisa probably wouldn’t make it through the night, he managed to break all speed limits and get to Melbourne airport in time for the last plane to Brisbane, he arrived 12.00 that night.
I called Trent, Trent is a 28 year old boy who has been writing to Lisa every year for the past 20 years. You see 28 years ago Lisa gave Trent up for adoption to a wonderful family in Melbourne. Lisa didn’t know Trent’s identity all she knew was his first name and through a service she managed to communicate with him once a year. She loved the letters from Trent and I would make her read the letters to me 2 and 3 times. About 18 months before Lisa died I decided that Trent had given us enough information that I could find him through the internet. It took me a couple of days but by the end of it I had his home phone number and his address. I didn’t intend on using it for any other purpose but in an emergency and this was an emergency.
When I called Trent I told him I was Cyndi O’Meara, Lisa Lovett’s sister. I explained why I was calling and he asked me to give him some time to comprehend all that was happening. I gave him my husband’s number as they do not allow phones on in the hospital. Once Lisa was in her private room, a nurse came in and told me there was a call for Lisa from her son Trent and would we take the call. I asked Lisa and she gave me a definite nod. Lisa and Trent spoke for the first time that night, it meant a lot to Lisa. Trent then sent us a photo of himself that we managed to copy and show to Lisa before she died.
Before Marcus arrived I talked to Lisa about her options. I told her about the operation, and the chances of survival and then I told her that we could stop giving her blood transfusions and she could die peacefully with us around her. She looked at me and she told me that her goal was Robust Health and if she couldn’t have it she didn’t want to live. She was determined but I had to ask her again. So at midnight when Marcus and Susannah arrived we talked to Lisa again and then we took the blood transfusions away.
We called key people in Lisa’s life and told them what was happening, my family came down, along with Jacki Postles. Barbara her best friend and receptionist also arrived. As it was getting late, my family left, but Casie decided she wanted to stay. By this time Marcus and Susannah had arrived. So around Lisa’s bed was Barbara, Marcus, Susannah, Casie and me. We talked through the night and every now and then Lisa would put her two cents in. She managed to fire Barbara her receptionist for the past 10 years (all in jest), and she also asked Marcus if she was dead yet. She was really very comical and still wanting to have the last word.
The morning came and I called more friends who said they were coming straight away. Lisa could now only nod slightly or utter grunts of approval or disapproval, then her breathing changed and I knew what was happening. I couldn’t believe that I was losing my sister. I left the room to heave the pain out of me, it wouldn’t go. Barbara came out to help me and she managed to create some strength so that I could go back into Lisa and be with her without tears and sorrow.
At 10.30 am I said to Dad that I could feel Mum in the room and my two uncles Denny and Carl who had all passed away previously. They had come to greet Lisa to take her onto her next great adventure.
We were all around her as she took her final breaths on 26th March 2007 at 10.50am, she did it with such grace and dignity and I realized then that not only was birth a miracle but so was death.
I believe that the conscious continues after the body has stopped working, I believe that Lisa is free from the body that stopped her from doing what she wanted to do, more adventure, more living and more excitement. Lisa and I often spoke of death and what was after it, she was very philosophical and often calmed my own fears. I no longer fear death as I’ve seen both my mother and sister go through it. What is amazing is that death has a sweet smell both my sister and mother had that same smell, just like birth has its distinct smell.
Lisa has not left me, I feel her with me a lot. I’ve had a dream about her and she guides me to help me through her passing. I have never cried so much as I have cried in the last 5 months since the passing of Mum and Lisa. A couple of weeks after Lisa died I was quite up set and some how I ended up in a store and made a direct line for the book section. There were five books that caught my eye on death and dying, but the two I bought were on life after death. Both books have given me amazing comfort in the knowledge that Lisa and Mum and Grandma are free spirits basking in the light of God and enjoying their next adventure.
As a nutritionist, author and speaker on health I began to doubt what I was saying was right, especially after the death of Lisa and Mum from cancer. How could I possibly help other people if I couldn’t even help my own family? I thought about quitting but Lisa through the book she guided me to read after her passing helped me realize the truth. Deepak Chopra’s book, Life After Death made me realize that I needed to continue to talk and write about health. You see, in Deepak’s book he tells of his father and mother dying from diseases. The message was clear; keep going.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Lisa and Mum. I’ve had two vivid dreams of both of them, one night after the other, Lisa first and then Mum, they were just telling me they were OK and happy. I still go to pick up the phone to talk to Lisa and then realize I don’t need the phone anymore. I can just talk to her.
I will miss them both very much, but know that my time and work on this planet is not finished so what seems like an eternity to me, it could be another 50 or more years that I have to live without them and before I see my mother and sister again, it will be but a second in time for them.
Till we meet again, I love you and will always keep your memories alive.
Cyndi O’Meara
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