Jaci Dawn

We called her Denny. She was born on the 15th day of May, 1959. I remember the day, vaguely: my grandparents were there and they let me have a foot-long hot-dog (which my parents would never have allowed because I couldn’t eat the whole thing). I didn’t eat the whole thing, but no one seemed upset that most of it went into the refrigerator. I remember nothing of my sister.

What there is to write of my sister’s life, I leave to her children. They all loved her fiercely. None of them want to hear about the sadness, the addiction, the abuses, the crimes. They remember their mother and they defend her with all of their hearts and souls. She was their best friend.

My sister cut her foot on something in her yard. She never wore shoes, not even in February in Ely, Nevada, when the ground was still frozen. She didn’t think much about the cut.

She called my dad to tell him she felt terrible. Her leg ached, her stomach roiled, she felt like she was dying. She cried on the telephone.

Her husband took her to the emergency room in Ely. The doctors did not know what was wrong with her, why she was in so much pain, or how to diagnose her.

I don’t know the exact timeline. Two days? Less? On March the 2nd, 2000, my dad called to tell me that Deni was being taken by air to Reno. She was in a coma. She’d been ill, but no one knew why. It had only been a couple days.

At Washoe Medical Center in Reno, they knew exactly what they were dealing with, but Denise’s body had already begun to shut down. There would be no saving her.

She died of Necrotizing Faciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. A streptoccocal bacteria that invaded a small wound in her body (in this case her foot) and began to shut down her vital organs. She died within 36 hours of cutting herself. The disease is so rare that the doctors in the small town of Ely had no idea what they were up against and by the time she arrived in Reno, it was too late.

March 3rd, 2000.

Ironically, our grandmother – my father’s mother – also died of a “streptoccal infection” at a hospital in Salt Lake City in 1930. The description of the disease in my grandfather’s journal is strikingly similar to the progress of the disease in Deni. I don’t know if there’s some genetic link. I merely find it ironic that two members of my family died of a bizarre disease, leaving small children behind.

It has been eleven years. Deni and I were not particularly close, but she was my little sister. I took her death hard. And for whatever sentimental reason, this anniversary of her passing is also hard.

I loved her. I miss her.

Her kids have grown up to be great kids. She would be happy with that.