Nancy Schuster Natoli 5/21/65 - 9/17/13

Heaven gained a beautiful angel as my mother slipped away from us in the early morning hours of Tuesday. 

Enough good things can't be said about my mom. It would be pointless to write a nice long blog post about her because I wouldn't be able to encapsulate everything. I'd rather leave it as: if you knew my mom, you already know. She was the life of my family and the abrupt and early loss of her will deeply affect my family forever. I owe every positive quality of my character to her, and my mom will always be my hero.

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Local Newspaper Obituary running on Friday, Sept 20:

Nancy Schuster Natoli

5/21/1965 - 9/17/2013

Nancy Schuster Natoli, 48, of Bel Air, MD, passed away Tuesday, September 17, 2013 in her home. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and is the daughter of Walter Jule Schuster Sr. and Jacqueline Vogel Schuster of Webster Groves, MO.

           In addition to her parents, Mrs. Natoli is survived by her devoted husband of 26 years, Vincent Dominic Natoli; children, Mary E., Michael B., and James V. Natoli of Bel Air; siblings Sister Dorothy Guadalupe Schuster, S.V. of Suffern, NY, Walter J. Schuster Jr. and wife Anne of Webster Groves, MO, Peter J. Schuster and wife Sonja of Atascadero, CA, and David M. Schuster and wife Loretta of Webster Groves, MO. She is also survived by 12 loving nieces and nephews and many aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Mrs. Natoli was successful in her roles as homemaker and careerwoman, serving as Program Director of the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. During her career, she protected the training mission of the armed forces by negotiating agreements with local and state authorities and environmental groups across the nation. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mrs. Natoli was known for her compassion, hospitality, and healthy lifestyle. She served in leadership roles and as a volunteer in many school and community organizations and was an active member of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, MD.

           Visitation will be held at McComas Funeral Home, P.A. in Abingdon, MD on Friday, September 20, 2013 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m.  Services will be at Mountain Christian Church in Joppa on Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 1 p.m. with Rev. Ben A. Cachiaras officiating.  Interment will be in the adjoining church cemetery.

            In lieu of flowers, gifts in memory of Mrs. Natoli may be directed to support colorectal cancer research at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Please make checks payable to Johns Hopkins University. Gifts may be mailed with a memo indicating that this gift is for colorectal cancer research in memory of Nancy Natoli to the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, 100 North Charles Street, Suite 234, Baltimore, MD 21201 or make a gift online.

Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.com.

The C word

Well, this post was supposed to be a positive, fun reflection on my exceptional summer. And maybe that post will come someday. But unfortunately my mom's declining health has kept me from writing the cheery "happily ever after" to this blog that I originally planned. So, fair warning: This is a darker, more raw post than any I've written before, and I'm sorry that it's appearing on my otherwise 100% positive blog. But a dark cloud has descended over my family, and that cloud is cancer. I'm not writing this for sympathy-- on the contrary, I don't like sympathy. Instead, this blog post has been writing itself for the past few weeks, and I feel like sharing as a sort of window to the terrible reality that cancer brings.

I came home to my world turned completely upside down. I used to think this stuff didn't happen to families like mine. Loyal father. Devoted mother. Smart kids. Family dinners and church every Sunday for as long as I can remember. We're literally that family people look over at and say, "why can't we be more like them?"

But cancer is an evil that does not discriminate. It attacks regardless of age, gender, race, wealth, personal qualities, and even health. Two years ago cancer didn't care that my grandfather took fish oil from a spoon every day, grew fresh vegetables in his garden, and was known to sometimes eat the rinds of his grapefruit. 

Cancer didn't care that my mom is the healthiest and least deserving person I know of this tragedy. Cancer must not have gotten the memo that a few years ago my mom literally broke a shovel in half with her own strength. That she routinely shocked her doctors with her ridiculously strong heart, and blood pressures that they only see in athletes. That she did a pushup for every mile I biked this summer, an average of 75 a day, up until she got her surgery.

The nurse comes in every few hours and asks: How do you rate your pain? Right off the bat we had to warn the nurses to scale her responses up by a factor of 10 or so - her tolerance of pain is extremely high; she'd probably say her pain was a "2" if her leg were falling off. We can't be sure but she probably ignored some warning signs that indicated this monster was growing inside of her.

The nurse is talking about the pain being caused by the cancer eating away her insides. 

But up until the day of her diagnosis she ran an average of 25 miles a week. We all knew if she didn't get to go running, because she would be in a bad mood that day. Now she can't get up and walk around the room. How do you rate that pain?

Every weekend she would race to the pool as soon as it opened at 11:00 sharp to jump in and swim her laps and then enjoy the sunshine. Now she can't take a shower without help and without having her power-port covered with saran wrap. How do you rate that pain?

She used to click her heels around the Pentagon all day, writing cutting-edge reports and negotiating land use around the nation for the Department of Defense. Now she can barely put together a coherent thought before drifting off into another narcotics-induced slumber. How do you rate that pain?

Her stomach, which she kept amazingly flat and toned. A woman who birthed three children would sit at the pool in a bikini at age 48 and make girls my age look bad. Now filled and swelled with three liters of sickening, cancerous fluid. How do you rate that pain?

Or the image of her CT scan, now burned into our memories. The red spots lighting up her entire abdomen, so widely proliferated that I couldn't tell what was cancer and what wasn't until the doctor told me. How do you rate that pain?

People tell me to enjoy the time I have with her. Guess what: cancer took that away from us, too. Her cancer is so aggressive and her health in such a downward spiral that she hasn't had a period of being able to function even remotely normally while undergoing treatment. We have not had any even small victories over this cancer, which makes it hard to keep up hope. 3 days after her diagnosis she went on a pain patch and 24/7 narcotics, and her mental fog has gotten progressively worse. 

Though I don't wish to compare what I feel on the same level as what my mom feels right now-- How do you rate the pain of being 21 years old and being involved in life or death decisions for your mother? Or for my dad, pouring out his love through care and unwavering attention -- in sickness and in health, just as he promised 26 years ago -- but still without the power to save her from the grasps of this disease.. How do you rate that pain?

Worst of all, there used to be a sparkle in her eyes, one that lit up any room she walked into, that I haven't seen since the day I left the Inner Harbor. It's been replaced by an awful yellow, as if the disease itself is actually staring at me through her eyes. 

How do you rate that pain?