Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203230127
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
An extra year.
She died Saturday having known her two sons - Brian, 6, and Kevin, 3 - just a little bit better.
Smusz had been diagnosed with breast cancer. A little over a year ago, her only hope was a costly bone-marrow transplant.
But her insurance company - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Virginia - denied coverage of the treatment, saying it was experimental. So Smusz and her husband, Frank, went public with their fight against the company. Along the way, they raised nearly $130,000 in donations - enough to pay for most of the $160,000 transplant, which was performed last April.
Since then, Smusz had been disease-free. "We've had an excellent year," Frank Smusz said Sunday. "She thought so, too. . . . She just got to do everything that a normal person would have done."
Her death came unexpectedly. The Smuszes had been prepared for death in the past, but not this time.
On Friday, Lorraine felt some back pains. Later, in the hospital, doctors found that the cancer had returned. By Saturday, her blood pressure had dropped.
She was still talking and joking with her family when she went to sleep Saturday evening. She died in her sleep.
"And she died with dignity," Frank Smusz said.
The success of last year's treatment meant that, in recent months, Lorraine was free from the frequent chemotherapy that had caused her to lose her hair and had compromised her dignity. Frank Smusz said it was almost as if God had wanted to spare Lorraine and the family a lengthy, painful death.
Yet Smusz thinks some people - particularly those arguing on behalf of Blue Cross and Blue Shield's continued denial of coverage - might look at Lorraine's death and say: See, the treatment didn't work.
He says they will be wrong.
"No. The treatment worked. Not forever. But how can you put a price on a year?" he said. "I have no regrets on anything."
Bone-marrow transplants succeed in 68 percent of the women who receive it. For the Smuszes, it bought an extra year they likely would not have had.
They vacationed. Had Christmas together. And Brian and Kevin each aged a year with their mom.
"That is a significant amount of time for them to remember mom and to have a good time with her," Smusz said.
Lorraine's death, though, won't slow her husband in his ongoing fight against Blue Cross and Blue Shield. A lawsuit against the company is still pending, and he will continue lobbying state legislators for their help.
Frank Smusz said there are too many others out there like Lorraine: a private, quiet person forced to take on big business to save her life.
"She was thrown into the arena out of necessity. To survive. To live."
by CNB