Healthcare was a passion for Sandra Ann Cowden. As a nurse, she found joy in caring for patients in their most vulnerable times. However, when she was just 30 years old, the script flipped, and she found herself on the receiving end of care when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
That experience drove her desire to write a book about her journey through the healthcare system in 1981 – both what was good and not good about it. Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t able to complete it. Just four years after her cancer diagnosis, Sandra Ann Cowden succumb to her illness. She was 34.
Though Sandra Ann’s book had only made it as far as handwritten notes in their roughest form, her daughter, Gundersen Health System cancer researcher Dr. Karen Cowden Dahl, was determined to see her mother’s wish across the finish line and establish the legacy she felt so strongly her mother deserved.
This month marked the release of “My Mother’s Roommate,” a posthumous memoir by Sandra Ann Cowden, with contributions by Dr. Cowden Dahl.
“She really felt compelled to share her story,” Dr. Cowden Dahl says. “She experienced so much trauma associated with that and the diagnosis. … This is 1981, and there was very little support for cancer patients. She felt compelled to write her story to help other patients. She wanted to connect to people.”
Dr. Cowden Dahl and her family are originally from New Mexico, where Sandra Ann underwent cancer treatment. Many of her doctors – in the hospital she worked at – were not good to her, Dr. Cowden Dahl says, but the first one who was, as fate would have it, went through his residency at Gundersen.
“They kind of connected because my mom said her husband was from (the La Crosse) area,” Dr. Cowden Dahl says. “That was the first doctor who treated her with any respect.”
A few weeks after her diagnosis, the family decided to head north for La Crosse, where Sandra Ann began radiation treatment at Gundersen. She resumed nursing at the VA Hospital, while her husband took a job as a pharmacist at Gundersen.
A dream fulfilled
Dr. Cowden Dahl’s earliest memories of her mother included her cancer. She recalls her being confined to bed but not understanding why.
“Cancer has always been a part of my life,” she says, adding that her father passed away from cancer last year. “To me, it was just, if you have cancer, you died and that’s not the case anymore. I know many cancer survivors. But still, many people die.”
This life around cancer, in part, is what drove Dr. Cowden Dahl to research the disease in hopes that her work someday provides answers and healing. But it was her mother’s personal battle with cancer and her desire to help others through the same experience that motivated her to complete the book. It’s something she always knew she’d do.
“She clearly wanted it published,” Dr. Cowden Dahl says. “She wanted to share her story and her trauma of what happened.”
So about 10 years, ago, she picked up the notes her father had given her and started typing. Over the next decade, she added her story, refined her mother’s words and worked with an editor and publisher to finish what her mother had started.
“It was a 43-year journey from when it started to now,” Dr. Cowden Dahl says.
The connection she wanted
Since its publishing, the book has impacted people she doesn’t know, as well as relatives who Dr. Cowden Dahl hasn’t seen for years. And those connections, she knows, are what her mother was aiming for.
“I’ve given it to her cousins, and one of her cousins has had cancer a couple times. And she then had to share with me some pictures and stories,” she says. “I think that’s just what she wanted.”
You can read more about and order Dr. Cowden Dahl’s book by visiting foxpointepublishing.com/author-karen-cowden-dahl. Or contact Dr. Cowden Dahl directly at [email protected].