R.I.P. Caroline Mitter, 1987-2019
Sep. 25th, 2019 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
child_of_the_airCW: death, chronic illness, medical incompetence
My close friend and "cis-ter," Caroline Mitter, died yesterday morning. It wasn't really unexpected—she had been chronically ill with mitochondrial disease for the past five years, and had had a number of cases of sepsis (what eventually killed her) due to infections in the IV central line she had been getting all her nutrition through for the several years since her gut stopped working—but it still hit me very hard and I spent most of yesterday breaking down crying nearly continuously.
I first met Caroline in eleventh grade. We sat next to each other in AP Chemistry and I think we were lab partners for part of the school year. Unfortunately, when she left high school a year early to start college, we lost touch, since Facebook didn't yet exist. We did manage to reconnect a little over Facebook while I was in college and grad school, though I only had a Facebook account intermittently.
Caroline and I really first became close in early 2015, when I moved back to the DC area to write up my Master's thesis and rebuild my life after leaving MIT due to a mental breakdown. Ironically, this was also when she had to leave school out in California, due to her health breaking down.
Caroline had been in her fourth year as a student at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of California, Davis, the best in the country when her health problems—newly diagnosed as mitochondrial disease at that point—got bad enough that she had to go on a medical leave that ended up being permanent.
Despite the fact that, at the time, she was struggling with university administrators, doctors, and discovering just how serious her illness was, the first thing she said to me when we found each other on Facebook in February 2015 was to express sympathies and concern about the problems I was having with MIT: "It sounds like you're in a very tough spot. It makes me angry on your behalf." That was textbook Caroline: no matter how much her life was sucking, she was always worried about other people, and upset about injustices that were happening to them.
I wish I'd stayed in better touch with Caroline when she left high school back in 2009, but the four-and-a-half years of close internet friendship I had with her were amazing. She was incredibly supportive through my fight with MIT administration and my advisor to finally get my Master's. She gave me useful advice when I was trying to figure out how to find doctors in the DC area, and was an incredible ally about trans issues. And besides all that, she always had an amazing, absurd, and erudite sense of humor.
While I was relearning DC-area geography after moving back home, I mentioned to her realizing that most of the places I spent time while growing up were in the watershed of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia, and she immediately informed me that "It's common for the indigenous range of a subspecies to correspond to such topographic features."
Like me, she had a deep love of geography and of place, even if we had very different sorts of places that we loved. While I've always been a bit of a city girl—I spent a lot of my childhood drawing maps of cities I invented, and I've been fascinated by public transit systems for a long time—Caroline, with her deep love of animals and the outdoors, preferred open, empty wilderness places.
Back in 2015, when we were catching each other up on our adventures since we'd fallen out of touch, she talked about all the parks and wild places in the California area she wanted to get to see.
Unfortunately, her illness ended up severely limiting her ability to travel at all, and particularly to places far from civilization, but when I saw her for the last time, this July, she told me she still occasionally made it out to an isolated spot on the coast north of San Francisco and that she hoped she'd be able to get to go there again.
On that last visit, we talked a lot about our travels. I told her about some of my crazy cross-country trips by bus and train, and all the cities I'd gone to, and she told me about the Badlands and the Black Hills and the Great Plains. She'd spent some of the summer before vet school in the Dakotas, volunteering with a group that provided veterinary services for the working horses on the Indian reservations out there. We both wished we'd managed to be close while her health was better: we could have had a wonderful drive across the country, with me showing her cities and her showing me the parks in between.
While we both knew that trip would never be possible, she did strongly encourage me to visit the Dakotas someday, and I promised her that I would do so. I'm going to try to travel there this summer if I can, though it's going to be hard to afford to do so, given how far away it is and the fact I'll still be an unemployed grad student. But, while I know I'll never be able to see nature the way she did, I want to get to see some of the places she thought were so amazing.
Another part of my life that I shared with Caroline was my poetry: she was one of my few friends who consistently read my poems, and there were a few of them that she really loved. One she loved was the first one I showed her. It was written while I was leaving MIT and struggling with mental illness:
More recently, she also told me she loved the last poem I sent her, late this July:
I could keep writing about Caroline all night, but I am not sure anyone would keep reading. (If you want more, one of her friends wrote a beautiful eulogy.) She was an amazingly smart, funny, and strong person, who meant a lot to me, who always supported me, and whom I aspire to be more like. Even while struggling against the disease that eventually claimed her life—and against the medical intransigence and incompetence that shortened it—she managed to train two amazing and adorable service dogs, Cricket and Raven. She provided an incredible amount of support for all her friends, and especially her fellow mitochondrial disease patients.
And well, the last thing she wrote to me, about a month ago, was "Oh dear. I'm sorry you're stressed, but you are NOT incompetent." I'll do my best to remember that.
My close friend and "cis-ter," Caroline Mitter, died yesterday morning. It wasn't really unexpected—she had been chronically ill with mitochondrial disease for the past five years, and had had a number of cases of sepsis (what eventually killed her) due to infections in the IV central line she had been getting all her nutrition through for the several years since her gut stopped working—but it still hit me very hard and I spent most of yesterday breaking down crying nearly continuously.
Me and Caroline Mitter the last time I saw her in person, July 2019.
I first met Caroline in eleventh grade. We sat next to each other in AP Chemistry and I think we were lab partners for part of the school year. Unfortunately, when she left high school a year early to start college, we lost touch, since Facebook didn't yet exist. We did manage to reconnect a little over Facebook while I was in college and grad school, though I only had a Facebook account intermittently.
Caroline and I really first became close in early 2015, when I moved back to the DC area to write up my Master's thesis and rebuild my life after leaving MIT due to a mental breakdown. Ironically, this was also when she had to leave school out in California, due to her health breaking down.
Caroline had been in her fourth year as a student at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of California, Davis, the best in the country when her health problems—newly diagnosed as mitochondrial disease at that point—got bad enough that she had to go on a medical leave that ended up being permanent.
Despite the fact that, at the time, she was struggling with university administrators, doctors, and discovering just how serious her illness was, the first thing she said to me when we found each other on Facebook in February 2015 was to express sympathies and concern about the problems I was having with MIT: "It sounds like you're in a very tough spot. It makes me angry on your behalf." That was textbook Caroline: no matter how much her life was sucking, she was always worried about other people, and upset about injustices that were happening to them.
I wish I'd stayed in better touch with Caroline when she left high school back in 2009, but the four-and-a-half years of close internet friendship I had with her were amazing. She was incredibly supportive through my fight with MIT administration and my advisor to finally get my Master's. She gave me useful advice when I was trying to figure out how to find doctors in the DC area, and was an incredible ally about trans issues. And besides all that, she always had an amazing, absurd, and erudite sense of humor.
While I was relearning DC-area geography after moving back home, I mentioned to her realizing that most of the places I spent time while growing up were in the watershed of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia, and she immediately informed me that "It's common for the indigenous range of a subspecies to correspond to such topographic features."
Like me, she had a deep love of geography and of place, even if we had very different sorts of places that we loved. While I've always been a bit of a city girl—I spent a lot of my childhood drawing maps of cities I invented, and I've been fascinated by public transit systems for a long time—Caroline, with her deep love of animals and the outdoors, preferred open, empty wilderness places.
Back in 2015, when we were catching each other up on our adventures since we'd fallen out of touch, she talked about all the parks and wild places in the California area she wanted to get to see.
I've spent just a tiny bit of time in northern NV, and I find it oddly fascinating. It's probably not in the cards for this lifetime but I would have loved to be able to spend time exploring the NW Nevada desert. I actually tried to plan a trip until I realized just how forbidding the country is, but I would love to just go sit next to one of those little streams in the mountains a bit east of the CA border, looking for mustangs and cougars and antelope.
Unfortunately, her illness ended up severely limiting her ability to travel at all, and particularly to places far from civilization, but when I saw her for the last time, this July, she told me she still occasionally made it out to an isolated spot on the coast north of San Francisco and that she hoped she'd be able to get to go there again.
On that last visit, we talked a lot about our travels. I told her about some of my crazy cross-country trips by bus and train, and all the cities I'd gone to, and she told me about the Badlands and the Black Hills and the Great Plains. She'd spent some of the summer before vet school in the Dakotas, volunteering with a group that provided veterinary services for the working horses on the Indian reservations out there. We both wished we'd managed to be close while her health was better: we could have had a wonderful drive across the country, with me showing her cities and her showing me the parks in between.
While we both knew that trip would never be possible, she did strongly encourage me to visit the Dakotas someday, and I promised her that I would do so. I'm going to try to travel there this summer if I can, though it's going to be hard to afford to do so, given how far away it is and the fact I'll still be an unemployed grad student. But, while I know I'll never be able to see nature the way she did, I want to get to see some of the places she thought were so amazing.
Another part of my life that I shared with Caroline was my poetry: she was one of my few friends who consistently read my poems, and there were a few of them that she really loved. One she loved was the first one I showed her. It was written while I was leaving MIT and struggling with mental illness:
"Possession"
Yes, doctor, I already knew about that:
that there's dragon coiled in my stomach.
He rests his head on my heart when he's content.
Quiet down, everything will be fine.
No, I'd rather leave him in there:
I asked you to heal me, not to cut out
my little reserve of hidden strength.
Please, let me handle this.
I don't think you understand; maybe you can't?
Have you ever been small and scared among a sea of troubles?
Sometimes it's worth it to breath borrowed fire,
even if it scorches your throat.
Yes, doctor, I already knew about that:
that there's dragon coiled in my stomach.
He rests his head on my heart when he's content.
Quiet down, everything will be fine.
No, I'd rather leave him in there:
I asked you to heal me, not to cut out
my little reserve of hidden strength.
Please, let me handle this.
I don't think you understand; maybe you can't?
Have you ever been small and scared among a sea of troubles?
Sometimes it's worth it to breath borrowed fire,
even if it scorches your throat.
More recently, she also told me she loved the last poem I sent her, late this July:
Homecoming
My soul is fire, quenched
in your cold embrace.
My breath is air, bubbling,
dissolved in your depths.
My body is earth, dropping
to join your sediments.
My blood is hidden brine,
released to the eternal sea.
I become one with you,
and I am become naught.
My soul is fire, quenched
in your cold embrace.
My breath is air, bubbling,
dissolved in your depths.
My body is earth, dropping
to join your sediments.
My blood is hidden brine,
released to the eternal sea.
I become one with you,
and I am become naught.
I could keep writing about Caroline all night, but I am not sure anyone would keep reading. (If you want more, one of her friends wrote a beautiful eulogy.) She was an amazingly smart, funny, and strong person, who meant a lot to me, who always supported me, and whom I aspire to be more like. Even while struggling against the disease that eventually claimed her life—and against the medical intransigence and incompetence that shortened it—she managed to train two amazing and adorable service dogs, Cricket and Raven. She provided an incredible amount of support for all her friends, and especially her fellow mitochondrial disease patients.
And well, the last thing she wrote to me, about a month ago, was "Oh dear. I'm sorry you're stressed, but you are NOT incompetent." I'll do my best to remember that.
