By JoNel AlecciaAUGUST 5, 2019
Kathy Brandt, a hospice industry leader who turned her own terminal cancer diagnosis into a public conversation about choices at the end of life, died Aug. 4. She was 54.
Brandt’s death was announced on social media by her wife and partner of 18 years, Kimberly Acquaviva, 47, a professor of nursing and author of a book about hospice care for LGBTQ patients and families.
“I wanted all of you to know that Kathy had a peaceful death and your love and support is what made that possible,” Acquaviva wrote in comments posted to Facebook. “Our family has felt your love and we can’t begin to tell you how much it’s meant to us.”
Brandt died at the Charlottesville, Va., home she shared with her wife, their 19-year-old son, Greyson Acquaviva, and their dogs, Dizzy and Mitzi. She was diagnosed in January with stage 3 ovarian clear cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive cancer.
For the past several months, Brandt and Acquaviva chronicled the day-to-day drama of dying in a series of frank, intimate posts on Facebook and Twitter aimed at demystifying the process and empowering other patients.
After researching her disease, which has a median prognosis of less than 13 months and often fails to respond to chemotherapy, Brandt refused drug treatment, declining what she regarded as “futile” medicine. Instead, she chose aggressive palliative care to manage her symptoms, to the dismay of some friends and family — and even her oncologist.
“If it’s not going to save my life, then why would I go through trying to get an extra month, when that month leading up to it would be terrible?” Brandt told Kaiser Health News in April.
The couple’s posts were followed by hundreds of well-wishers who donated more than $80,000 to help defray living expenses and medical costs. The essays and tweets were an unusually intimate window into the physical, emotional and psychological process of dying.
In April, Brandt described herself as a “dead woman walking” on the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., where they lived until June.
“It’s surreal trying to go about a ‘normal’ life when you know you aren’t going to be around in a few months,” she wrote.
