Jill Conley, Beautiful And Brave, Passes Away

Editor’s Note: Jill Conley died at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday with her husband, Bart, and her mother, Rosemary Duchon, by her side. Duchon said “she passed away peacefully” and is now pain-free. The following is a tribute to her life and legacy by health reporter Laura Ungar, who has been documenting her story since October 2013. Who is Jill conley And People Who Know Jill Brzezinski- Conley both say her light will shine. By the time I met Jill in 2013, she had been battling breast cancer for 4 years and it was in her bones. I documented her journey for The Courier-Journal as the disease ravaged her body, invading the left pleura, then the inside of the left lung, then the liver, then finally the right lung. true beauty, which even the cruelty of incurable disease cannot erase. What makes Jill shine is not her model-like beauty, but her confidence and kindness. She never liked wearing a prosthetic in a bra, or wearing a wig on her head. She said very early on: “I choose to be who I am – to be beautiful.” She wants everyone to feel the same way. She sees her audience as not just cancer patients but also bullied children, people struggling with weight problems or disabilities who don’t fit their aesthetic ideals. beauty of society. , to raise money for families struggling with cancer and make it her legacy. But for readers, her legacy is her story. also hug those closest to her. She gracefully accepts her husband’s growing role of caregiver. She raised her young nieces like a mother, writing life lessons for them in diaries that she knew would outlast her. She was almost constantly in court for visiting friends, first in her apartment and then in her hospital room.Family and friends say Jill is all of this from her early days growing up in Michigan.She moved to Las Vegas as a young adult and has the ability to jump on stage at bars to sing with a band as well as give an elderly stranger a few dollars in a casino. She was working as a bartender there when she first met Bart, a tall, broad-shouldered college football player who was almost a pro. Bart once told me that attraction is “immediate”. “Her beauty, her character – she’s got the pieces.” Read more: Who is Blake Griffin’s current girlfriend? What is his relationship with Kendall Jenner? They married in 2008 and settled near the Bart family in Kentucky. They quickly started talking about having a baby, Jill’s lifelong dream. But just eight months after the wedding and a day before her 32nd birthday, doctors diagnosed her with stage 3 cancer. She had undergone 16 rounds of extremely harsh chemotherapy – losing her hair, nails and nails. , toenails, eyelashes and eyebrows. She suffered from nausea, vomiting, mouth sores, and hemorrhoids. Every bone in her body ached, and for the first time in her life she felt ugly. Bart reminds her how beautiful she is as she endures treatment after treatment: a double mastectomy, 31 rounds of radiation, breast implant surgery and a mastectomy The left implant was burned. All of these are only available for a short time; The disease came back in her sternum. This time, Hemo is not the worst disease in her treatment regimen. Doctors also prescribed a hormone-blocking shot that shuts down ovarian function, taking away any chance of starting a family. To live, she had to give up her dream. Anger and bitterness crept in until she woke up one morning with a new perspective: “I either have to accept and accept it, or I can’t move on.” Award-winning Australian photographer, her friend’s boss, took her to Paris to take pictures. The photos were featured in a viral video on Jill called “The Light that Shines,” which led to appearances on “The Today Show” and social media posts by supermodels Elle Macpherson and Vanessa Lachey . When her cancer reached stage 4, she vowed to give up chemotherapy if it made her too nauseous, exhausted or weak to live up to her time – and she delayed the treatment over time. . She refuses to wither in bed. getting sick too often – only changed his mind when the doctor recommended a chemotherapy drug called Doxil that only had to be given once a month. , her eyes filled with tears, that one of her biggest fears about taking Doxil was going bald again – bringing about a clear victory over cancer. hold them as she wraps them around her head with her trained hands. When the cancer invaded the lining of the lungs and then the lungs, it took away Jill’s breath. When it spread to her liver, it brought weakness and pain. As it lowers her immunity, it leaves her vulnerable to viral and bacterial infections. Stuck in the hospital gradually became more frequent, and lasted longer. In November, she collapsed in her Norton Commons apartment, needed CPR, then had a seizure on the way to the hospital, but somehow recovered. Finally, right on the eve of the new year, she learned that the cancer had spread to her lungs and decided to stop chemotherapy and go home to last resort. selling t-shirts to raise funds for hospital nurses. She talked in between hospital stays, but mostly closer to home. After the community started following her story, she was a VIP at the Pegasus Derby parade and the first speaker in a Norton Healthcare series called “Be Confident”. She also gave a talk to young women at Assumption High, telling them, “Every single one of you is worth it. Each of you is very beautiful. “Jill tried her best to do all she could and paid a heavy price. Once, after a trip to Cincinnati to be honored by the Bengals football team, she woke up drenched in sweat, barely able to breathe. She noticed her limits during a 5K fundraiser for Jill’s Wish in 2014, where she walked alongside Canadian university student Alyssa O’Brien, who has cerebral palsy and uses a walker. But less than a quarter of a mile into the course, she turned, too cramped to continue. She stood beside the finish line and watched the others cross without her. She will walk alongside her friends and family, keeping them close, for as long as she can. She spoke at length with each of them about living as herself and ignoring bullies, and filled her diary with recipes, observations, and life lessons, such as: “You will always be beautiful if you treat everyone you meet with Love and respect!” She is also in the final stages of her upbringing, especially as her cancer progresses. . The first day Conley was at home in the hospice, Duchon told her, “It makes me so proud of how you’ve lived. It is a privilege to be your mother. It really has. “Bart, meanwhile, spent hours beside her in bed, holding her hand, talking to her, cuddling her. Caring then became a central part of their relationship; Bart did everything from helping her into the bathroom to draining fluid out of her lungs. And through all she knew his love. During one hospitalization, she couldn’t sleep until Bart lay down on the bed beside her. But Bart was never ready to let her go. When she told him that she sometimes wished she were dead when she collapsed in November, he took her hand and told her he wasn’t ready, “it wasn’t possible then.” can you know how good you have been to this world, to hundreds of people…” he said, choking. “Everybody loves you. I love you. “I love you too,” she replied. “So many.” Last week, Conley talked to me about faith, about how she no longer fears death because she believes in an afterlife where she will reunite with loved ones who passed before her. and “there won’t be any more pain or anything. ” Knowing she was going to meet God, she told me, “feels good.” She said nothing to any of those close to her. She wrote goodbye letters to friends and family members to open after her death. She told everyone close to her that she loved them – family, friends, doctors, even me, after I sat with her during a chemotherapy session. I hugged her tightly that afternoon, then cried in the car after she and Bart drove away.She spoke to me again when I stopped by her apartment one day in late 2015, when she thanked me for telling her story. We cried in each other’s arms. As journalists, we always try to maintain a certain distance from our audience and not become too caught up in their lives. But Jill would never allow that. She has no time for anything but love. And that is perhaps her greatest lesson, her greatest gift, to all of us. Twitter @ laura_ungar.Read more: who is the author of antigen | Top Q&A