Caitlin’s Battle Comes to an End
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DATE: 01/23/2006 01:38:31 PM
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People Magazine – January 30, 2006 – The mailbag page (page 8) of this issue has a short follow-up on a earlier story People did introducing a young girl suffering from metastatic osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer in A Place to Say Goodbye, October 31, 2005.
Caitlin Dolahan, 18, received a phone call from Johnny Depp according to this report from People before she died. Below is the follow-up story in it’s entirity.
Caitlin’s Battle Comes to an End
In many ways Caitlin Dolaghan was just like any other California teen -worried about getting her driver’s license and what to wear to the prom. But when we introduced Caitlin then 18, to our readers last fall in a story about the nation’s first free standing hospice for kids (“A Place to Say Goodbye,” Oct. 31, 2005) she was also battling metastatic osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. Earlier this month Caitlin lost her fight. She died at home on Jan. 12, surrounded by her mother Carol, dad John, sister Peggy and brother Wilson.
PEOPLE chronicled Caitlin’s struggle and also the time she spent at George Mark Children’s House , an extraordinary San Leandro, Calif., facility for dying kids, where she volunteered as an art instructor. Says GMCH cofounder Kathy Hull: “Caitlin’s willingness to share and the time and energy she spent to tell her story to so many people were amazing.” Our readers thought so too. Some 250 made financial donations to the home. Two people called Caitlin personally to offer support: Amy Lee, lead singer of Caitlin’s favorite band, Evanescence, and Johnny Depp, who phoned from a movie set in the Bahamas to invite Caitlin to Los Angeles – a trip she never got the chance to make. The memory of Caitlin’s courage remains vivid for those of us who came to know her.
Donations in her honor can be made to Comfort for Kids at www.hospicecc.org