BLOG: Sarah’s trip to Lansing
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Earlier in the week, I was contacted by Ellen Dran, mother of the late Dr. Sarah Hallberg. For those who may not know her, Sarah was a champion of medicine and of life.
We had a phone conversation, in which Ellen expressed the family’s gratitude for the post I wrote in Sarah’s memory, last September.
I find it so hard to write another post about Sarah, but this phone conversation with Sarah’s mom has inspired me to write this post about the story of Sarah’s trip to Lansing.
Sarah Hallberg passed away in March at the age of 50 of advanced lung cancer. She had never smoked. Sarah was a national expert in obesity management. She was a strong advocate of a low-carb diet to treat obesity and not only to treat but to reverse type 2 diabetes.
Her work was evidence-based. Sarah was the principal investigator of the largest study ever to address reversal of type 2 diabetes with carbohydrate restriction. Results of the 2-year data were published recently (Athinarayanan SJ, et al. Front Endocrinol [Lausanne] 2019;doi:10.3389/fendo.2019.00348). While Sarah lived long enough to complete the 5-year data for the study, she has not (sadly) lived long enough to see the final results published.
In my original post, I wrote of Sarah:
“I have rarely attended scientific lectures where a speaker talks so freely from the heart — with utmost passion, sincere compassion, powerfully motivational tone and a touch of humor.”
I also wrote that Sarah had written last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas on her professional Facebook page that she was feeling better:
“My scans on Friday showed diffuse regression of my tumors, so much so that the biopsy I was supposed to have, was canceled.
Miracle? Yes...”
Sarah had announced her cancer diagnosis publicly on July 5, 2020. She wrote in the Tampa Bay Times:
“I have advanced cancer. Stage 4 lung cancer, to be exact, even though I have never smoked, and I am only 48 years old. Cancer is scary enough, but now I am in a real unknown, with so many others like me: dealing with advanced cancer in a pandemic. Don’t get me wrong. For me personally, the pandemic has not been all bad. For a mother with terminal cancer, the lockdown has given me time I could never imagine having with my busy kids. A hidden gift in the madness.”
I wrote in the aforementioned post: “As an endocrinologist, I have been talking in my lectures about Sarah’s impressive scientific work in obesity management — the largest study on reversing type 2 diabetes via weight loss with supervised dietary modification. I was impressed by her courage, scientifically speaking, in challenging the status quo in traditional diabetes guidelines. ... Sarah is among the few scientists and clinicians I have heard emphasize the concept of ‘pre-prediabetes.’”
Sarah’s courage, graciousness and advocacy in her life journey are impressive, and I testify that collectively, they can rarely be matched: courage in battling a very aggressive lung cancer that is so difficult to justify.
There is no doubt that Sarah attained well-deserved global fame through her 18-minute TEDx Talk in 2015, which I have watched countless times to the extent that I have almost memorized it word for word.
The TEDx talk was titled “Reversing T2DM starts with ignoring the guidelines," which is a revolutionary, thought-provoking and challenging title. At the time of writing this post there have been 10 million views, 172,000 likes, zero dislikes and 19,524 comments.
After watching Sarah’s TEDx talk, I called her, and introduced myself. We discussed her work, and she was so happy that “an endocrinologist showed interest in her work," she told me. I later invited Sarah as a guest speaker for the 2019 annual Raymond Murray Memorial Grand Round at MSU. Sarah traveled from Lafayette, Indiana, to Lansing for the Grand Round on April 16, 2019. That was the day when I had the honor and the blessing of meeting Sarah in person. At the time, I did not know about Sarah’s cancer diagnosis.
I later learned very touching details about this trip to Lansing when I had the honor to have a Zoom chat with Sarah 8 weeks before she passed away. During the chat she let me in on a secret: She had been receiving chemotherapy at the time of the Grand Round, and because of the side effects, she had almost canceled her talk. First, she canceled the dinner and breakfast and then the flight. She was just too fatigued to travel. Then at the last minute, a family member offered to drive her the 4 hours from Lafayette to Lansing. She slept the entire trip and went back to sleep as soon as she got to the hotel. By morning she had recovered enough to deliver the talk in her usual dynamic manner. No one realized anything was wrong.
If you watch the YouTube video of Sarah’s Raymond Murray Memorial Grand Round in Lansing, you might notice that Sarah's right hand never moves from her side, while she gestures enthusiastically with her left. In our Zoom call, Sarah told me that she had to keep the right hand down because she had a small cut on a finger. She was on a blood thinner, and the cut bled through the Band-aid and onto my papers on the podium. She apologized for the stains — of course, there was no need at all to apologize. In retrospect, I do not recall (now) if I noticed the blood stains on my papers.
I have pledged to myself to write more posts in memory of Sarah, but I was not clear when or in what context. Somehow, I have wanted to write a Christmas post, but Christmastime has almost passed and I thought I would not write a post. So, this recent communication with Sarah’s mom has miraculously come in time. It is so sad for me to realize how difficult it will be for Sarah’s family to have the first Christmas without her.
Dear Sarah, may your soul rest in peace.
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