AUBURN - Springtime was always one of Diane Sigl's favorite times of year. As soon as the ground thawed, she started digging around in her vegetable garden, planting the tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes and fresh herbs she used to tempt her friends and keep her boyfriend, Scott Whiting, well-fed.
Sigl's flower garden was another outlet for her raw energy, a place that reflected her unique touch, with doorknobs tucked into flower beds and paths paved from the broken glass from blue wine bottles. This year she had planned to transplant the rose bushes her friend's grandmother had brought over from Poland in 1890.
But the roses might have to wait.
In December, around the time she was helping her friend Rusty Noga dig up the flowers from his family home, Sigl's head started aching and her hands twitching. She tried taking over-the counter-medication to shrug off the pain, but the headache was waiting for her there when they wore off, pounding and insistent.
An inoperable tumor in the left brachial tube of her left lung had spread to her brain, multiplying nine times. This spring, doctors said, would probably be her last.
Ask any one of her friends to describe the 54-year-old Throop resident and they grin, saying, “Feisty,” or “She tells it like it is.”
And the straight-talking Sigl makes no bones about it: Dying sucks.
The radiation she underwent to treat the brain tumors weakened her body, killing her hair, and her appetite.
She doesn't have the strength these days to go off-roading with her friend Debra Kellogg in her Dodge pickup, to spend time with the dozens of children who call her “Aunt Diane” or to cook the seafood and Italian dishes she used to make as a chef at the Hollywood Restaurant.
“I feel robbed. I feel robbed,” she said.
The one thing her illness hasn't affected is her spirit.
At a fundraiser in her honor Saturday, Sigl sat wearing a black leather jacket and a black felt hat pinned with an orange button reading “1 Tequila, 2 Tequila, 3 Tequila, Floor.” Surrounded by friends and the smell of homemade meatballs, she smiled at loved ones and even mustered an appetite for pasta.
“I know Diane,” her caregiver Donna Plis said, “And she's going to fight to the end.”
But the roses might have to wait.
In December, around the time she was helping her friend Rusty Noga dig up the flowers from his family home, Sigl's head started aching and her hands twitching. She tried taking over-the counter-medication to shrug off the pain, but the headache was waiting for her there when they wore off, pounding and insistent.
An inoperable tumor in the left brachial tube of her left lung had spread to her brain, multiplying nine times. This spring, doctors said, would probably be her last.
Ask any one of her friends to describe the 54-year-old Throop resident and they grin, saying, “Feisty,” or “She tells it like it is.”
And the straight-talking Sigl makes no bones about it: Dying sucks.
The radiation she underwent to treat the brain tumors weakened her body, killing her hair, and her appetite.
She doesn't have the strength these days to go off-roading with her friend Debra Kellogg in her Dodge pickup, to spend time with the dozens of children who call her “Aunt Diane” or to cook the seafood and Italian dishes she used to make as a chef at the Hollywood Restaurant.
“I feel robbed. I feel robbed,” she said.
The one thing her illness hasn't affected is her spirit.
At a fundraiser in her honor Saturday, Sigl sat wearing a black leather jacket and a black felt hat pinned with an orange button reading “1 Tequila, 2 Tequila, 3 Tequila, Floor.” Surrounded by friends and the smell of homemade meatballs, she smiled at loved ones and even mustered an appetite for pasta.
“I know Diane,” her caregiver Donna Plis said, “And she's going to fight to the end.”
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