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Heather Jose: A Brother and Advocate for Breast Cancer

October 8, 2008 - 8:21am 341 reads comments

It’s a gray and dreary day in Michigan. For all of you lovers of Fall this is why I hate it. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Where is the sun? There is something good about today though, it is my brother’s birthday.

Troy is my older brother by twenty months. He has always taken his job quite seriously. We have pictures of us as young children where he is lovingly tilting his head toward mine. We played together when we were kids. We rarely fought. I saved that for my younger brother Josh. Troy was the quietest one of us, the thinker. He didn’t mind when I hung out with all of his classmates in high school. He even looked in on me when we attended the same college.

My mom called Troy the night that I found out the cancer had spread to my bones. She told him that they needed to do something. She wasn’t okay with her daughter being told to ‘get your affairs in order.’ Troy, I’m told, dropped everything and went to work as a big brother. He and his wife were living in Texas at the time. Troy was working as a flight surgeon on an Air Force Base, having completed med school already.

Troy picked up the phone and got to work. He started with his contacts at the University of Michigan Medical School.

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