spent the bulk of Mary's last years playing a game that we called "Gag—you're it!" We wondered which of us would emerge the winner but all the time prayed for a tie. (Humor—it's all about humor!)

Mary had joint surgery at an earlier age than I did, but our cancers crossed paths—pulling us together spiritually, albeit banishing our childhood innocence. During Mary's remissions, she supported me through a dozen osteoarthritic breakdowns, including a very nasty multiple corpectomy that left my "hipbone connected to my neckbone." (Humor—it's all about humor!)

After six long months, I finally shed my collar. Life was good! Little did I know that just two short weeks later, my annual mammogram would find invasive breast cancer. The first person I called after Joe was Mary. I mean, really—it's all about the game. I was "it." What she said to me that night was: "If I could, I would take it from you and add it to my collection!" (Humor—it's all about humor!)

Her support kicked into high gear when I had a nine-hour bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction—followed by chemo and shopping for new bras. Mary being Mary, she fully understood my sick enthusiasm for explaining to everyone how my "abs" had become my "pecs." (Humor—it's all about humor!)

But (there's always a but . . .) Mary got sick again. Mary was now "it." When I stood in her hospital room during her last days, she held my hands and cried, "Cindie, this could be the end of the game." I knew then that I was going to win. But I never knew that winning could hurt so much.

Now, every time I hear Mary's wind chimes outside my window, every time I climb into her beloved Z3 next to Joe and go for a ride, every time I talk to one more scared soul who thinks her life is over because she has breast cancer, I remember the game. I won for a reason—so I can teach others how to move around the board successfully, feeling good about who they are and determined about where they're going. Cancer is not a death sentence. We might not all survive it, but I do believe that Mary's dying and my living can only offer promise. Win or lose,

We're always glad to hear from readers about matters pertaining to medicine at Dartmouth or to the contents of past issues of Dartmouth Medicine. Letters to the editor may be sent to DartMed@Dartmouth.edu. Letters may be edited for clarity, length, or the appropriateness of the subject matter.

we're all in this game together.

Cynthia E. Smith-Daubenspeck
Marysville, Pa.

Got it right

It was a pleasure to see Timothy Takaro in print again [Takaro, a 1942 DMS graduate, was the author of a feature in the Fall 2004 issue titled "The Man in the Middle," about Dartmouth College alumnus Basil O'Connor's role in the creation of the polio vaccine]. I knew O'Connor slightly, and Tim got it right.

Colin B. Holman, M.D.
Dartmouth College '39
Mercer Island, Wash.

Polio connections

Your Fall issue had an interesting profile by Timothy Takaro of Basil O'Connor. In portraying O'Connor's adroitness in achieving headlines and public support for the anti-polio effort, Takaro omitted one typical O'Connor touch—the fact that the public announcement of the successful results of the Francis polio vaccine field trial was scheduled deliberately on April 10, 1955, the 10th anniversary of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It is also worth noting that the October 13, 2004, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association features

(on pages 1749-51) an editorial titled "Poliomyelitis in the United States —The Final Chapter?" by your own John Modlin, Dartmouth's chair of pediatrics (and one of my first medical students here at Duke).

Samuel L. Katz, M.D.
DC '48, DMS '50
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Katz is himself a noted figure in the history of infectious disease. An emeritus professor of pediatrics at Duke, he began his career in the lab of Nobel Laureate John Enders, whose work had been instrumental in developing the polio vaccine. And Katz's many honors include the 2003 Sabin Gold Medal, presented by the Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute in memory of the developer of the oral polio vaccine.

And more connections

I was in the final stages of editing a limited-edition book on the 420 recipients of the Dartmouth College Alumni Award, for presentation in December to all living recipients of the award, when I came across the Fall 2004 issue of Dartmouth Medicine. I was pleased to read there the great story on Basil O'Connor, DC '12, the founding president of the March of Dimes. Not only was he a recipient of the College's Alumni Award, but, as it happens, he's one with whom I had a personal connection, as I was involved in raising funds for the March of Dimes many decades ago. In fact, I highlighted him in my book, which features alumni in classes from 1894 to 1977.

Although my book contains several other images of Basil, I was particularly taken with two of the photos in your article—the one of him with the 1954 March of Dimes "poster girl" and the one of him with General George Patton. You would not necessarily know this, but one of Patton's senior aides was another Alumni Award recipient and possibly Dartmouth's most-decorated veteran of World Wars I and II—Harry Semmes '13. I suspect there was a tie between Patton, O'Connor, and Semmes at the time the Patton-O'Connor photo was taken—but that is for another story . . .