Stories

I moved to Michigan when I was 18, and I met Danyel when I was 19. We both worked at Borgess together, ironically on the oncology floor. We have the same last name, and we often told people we were sisters.

Honestly, listing all of this is bittersweet because people don't talk about her anymore.  So, it's almost like I'm keeping her memory alive. And I know that it was really important for her that people knew just how fast it could happen to you.

For my 30th birthday, we went to Vegas to celebrate getting old, and 15,000 feet above ground, we jumped out of an airplane. It was such an amazing memory to look back on even though I'll never do it again. It was a celebration of life in a sense, jumping out of this airplane, turning 30, because that was old to us back then. I think back to that now, and I'm so glad that I got to experience that with her.  

When she was 36, Danyel developed a tooth infection that wouldn’t go away even with multiple rounds of antibiotics. Her dentist eventually recommended blood work, and when her results came back, she went straight to Bronson ER. When she sent me her labs, all I could think was, “There’s no way it’s cancer.” 

Within 48 hours, the doctors determined it was acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and started her on chemotherapy within a couple hours of her getting to the hospital. AML is a cancer people are known to have at the age of 65 but not 36.

The chemo wasn’t helping, but they found a perfect bone marrow donor. While that was exciting, the doctors needed the chemo to start working first. They decided to do genetic testing, and found Danyel had 13 different genetic mutations, some of which were chemo resistant. None of the mutations were hereditary.  

She ended up going from Bronson to Grand Rapids, where they tried a chemo medicine that targeted the FLT3, and it worked. By then, though, she had progressed so far that there was nothing more they could do in Grand Rapids, but she qualified for a clinical trial at MD Anderson in Houston. In Houston, she developed a sinus infection that spread to her esophagus.

In October of 2021, Danyel told me about Mary Zack’s Justice for Otsego Facebook group and that she thought the contamination could have contributed toward her leukemia. I was blown away by how one person could come up with all this information. The number of rare cancers in such a small town was incredible.  

By the time Danyel came home to Otsego from Houston, it looked like this infection was eating the rest of her. Danyel had sores on her face, she couldn’t talk, and it turns out there were additional issues that had gone overlooked. Danyel was flown back and almost didn’t make it. Her blood pressure tanked and she refused pain medication. Danyel wanted to be present, until the very end. Within two days of returning home she died. 

The sores on her face looked like beauty marks, and it felt like at any second she was going to wake up and yell at me and her daughter to turn the lights off. It was different seeing her after the fact, compared to everything she’d been through.  

After Danyel passed away, her mother-in-law, who really was like a second mother to her, ended up with the kids. Now the kids are 18, 17, and the youngest one is seven. I worry about those kids every single day. Their grandma is an incredibly positive force in their lives. I’m more worried about when they’re older and on their own.  

You're never supposed to be a child and lose a parent at a young age. How is this going to negatively affect them? How hard is it going to be for her daughter to get married and not have her mom there, or for her sons to get married and not have that mother-son dance, or her youngest—he doesn't really have any memories of her. How much of that is going to mentally affect him? Graduating fifth grade, graduating high school, I know that was really hard for her daughter, but her boys still have to go through it. It's scary to think what path they might end up going down if they don't have the proper support. 

And in the beginning, it was really hard. I feel so terrible for saying this out loud: the pain was so bad that I almost felt like some days it would have been easier if I didn't know her. I know that it was such an awful thing to think, since my life is better because of her. Grief will make you think things that aren’t always true, and for me it was a means of survival without the one person that convinced me that life was worth living. Because she was in my life, she welcomed me into hers. She made you love her. You didn't have a choice.

Now I live in Arizona. I tried to stay there in Michigan; we just had so many memories. I did the whole therapy thing and that was going great, but every corner I took, every place I passed, everything reminded me of what we had and not what we have. It made healing harder. People go their whole lives trying to find their person, and I found mine before I was even old enough to think on my own. I couldn't be more grateful.  

I don't really process the loss. I know that it's not healthy. I felt like every day was my absolute worst because I didn't have family without her. I mean, I have my own children, but I didn't have family. Christmases were spent with her, Thanksgiving was spent with her, Halloween, birthdays. It was hard learning how to relive life without the foundation. Without minimizing the importance of my sisters, husband, and children in my life, I don’t have parents that I communicate with, so my extended family was Danyel and hers.

My kids are 20, 13, and 6. My oldest son doesn't really talk about Danyel. I don't know if he just shuts it out. My middle child was actually named after her. Danyel practically raised her. I don’t think I focused enough on how she was impacted by watching me completely fall apart and not know how to get up. She couldn't have been named after a better person because that's who Danyel was. I learned a lot about humility in trying to put my kids first despite what I was going through. 

My daughter came in a couple weeks ago crying and upset. She said she missed Aunt Danyel, but she didn’t want to tell me because she didn’t want to make me cry from talking about her. It’s probably happened more often than I realize. 

When Danyel first got diagnosed, I messaged Mary, thanking her for all she was doing. Mary, even though she's going through her own thing, still took the time to think of others. She would send me messages and tell me that she was praying for me, especially after Danyel passed. She was fighting so hard to put an end to this lack of accountability.  

Mary was tired of losing people at such a young age. I cherish those memories because it changed the dynamics of feeling alone, watching someone die, and feeling like it's not necessarily in vain, but there's no end. Countless people are going to continue to suffer. I think back to those messages from Mary, and she was so passionate. She made you want to get involved. She made you want to care. I was angry for everyone that was suffering, not just because of my own personal experience. I was drowning in grief, but she gave me this will to want to speak.

What would justice for Otsego look like to you?

Justice would feel like accountability. Nobody really knows where this contamination started. If they knew that it was dangerous, I think justice would look like more help, more resources. I mean, aside from what Mary had created and what you guys are doing, I don't think anyone really knows that there are options out there that could prevent future contamination. Justice would definitely look like not half the people in your town having some sort of disease or fearing getting sick. It's so much deeper than just older people getting cancer and passing away. Nobody should ever get that, but young, very young people, children.  It's sickening, it's maddening.  

Justice for Otsego sounds like transparency and holding the right people accountable, but it also looks like living. It looks like people who have been wronged being given the opportunity to thrive instead of barely surviving or, worse, dying. It looks like people being able to find pleasure in the most mundane things instead of searching for a purpose for all of their pain. I can’t help but think that those things also play a part in what justice for Otsego looks like. Justice looks like living instead of looking for signs from those we have lost in hopes that it may help lessen the void from their passing. It might sound different or not make much sense, but it would feel like justice!  

Please click here if you would like to donate bone marrow to help people like Danyel.