RT Journal
A1 Cripe LD
T1 GIving up
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2009
FD May 6
VO 301
IS 17
SP 1747
OP 1748
DO 10.1001/jama.2009.550
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.550
AB 
I was quite fond of Dawn. Seven years before, when she was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, she had already endured years of complications from type 1 diabetes and a kidney transplant. To her the AML was merely one more challenge. “Just tell me what I need to do,” she said after I explained the treatment. And then she smiled what I came to think of as her “This too I can do” smile. Even at our lowest moments she would muster a wide dimple-punctuated smile, nod her head, and say, “All right, let's go.” Her initial hospitalization was lengthy and complicated. Afterward it was months before she was able to live independently. But the remission held despite the subtype of AML and her inability to receive additional therapy. At the end of each office visit, assured by the evidence of a sustained remission, she would bring her hands together in prayer and then clasp and pump them into the air like a prize fighter, like the champion she was, and smile.