Agata Mroz celebrating a win in volleyball
Posted on 06/16/2008 2:00:24 PM PDT by NYer
.- Thousands of Poles lined up to say their final goodbyes to Agata Mroz, a young volleyball star who died on June 4 after postponing a bone marrow transplant in order to allow her daughter to be born.
At the age of 17, Agata was diagnosed with leukemia. She battled the disease and ended up becoming one of the top athletes in Poland, winning the European Volleyball Championship twice with her country’s team. She joined the professional volleyball team CAV in Murcia, Spain, where she also led the team to title wins.
Her struggle against leukemia forced her to take a sabbatical year during which she received many blood transfusions. Thousands of Poles donated blood for her cause. On June 9, 2007, she married Jacek Olszewski. She was too weak to travel away for a honeymoon but soon afterwards she became pregnant. A few weeks later, doctors discovered her cancer had progressed. She decided to postpone a bone marrow transplant until after the baby’s birth, set for April 4.
Agata told the Polish daily Dziennik that she never regretted her pregnancy. “The news I was going to be a mother made me feel fortunate. I was so happy because I would know what it was like to be a mother and I would give my husband something good from myself,” she said.
Agata underwent the transplant after the birth but she contracted a deadly infection. Her funeral Mass was celebrated in the same church that she was married in one year earlier to the day. She was remembered for her heroism and her decision to confront her illness.
Bishop Marian Florczyk of Kielce presided at the Mass and said Agata gave Poland a witness of “love, motherhood, the desire to give life and the heroic love for an unborn child.”
Prayers up.
WOW!!
What a beautiful woman - inside as well as out.
Saints still walk among us.
God bless her and her baby.
“The news I was going to be a mother made me feel fortunate. I was so happy because I would know what it was like to be a mother and I would give my husband something good from myself,” she said.
.....classy, too.
Compare the sacrifice of this woman to any pro-abortion advocate. This woman showed what being a mother and a woman is all about: Selfless sacrifice and love of family.
Might be one to look at for canonization.
What a...what? Sometimes words can’t do justice to describe such a person. She is truly one of God’s gifts, and she now rests in His presence, a bright light for us all. There’s another angel in heaven.
I respect her decision, because it was brave and goodhearted. Yet I wonder how a person with such severe cancer ever decided to have a child in the first place.
Cancer is a life threatening disease that requires life destroying toxic agents to treat. Pregnancy also lowers the immune system. Getting pregnant was a recipe for disaster.
Did her doctors not warn her against this?
Some protect them even at the cost of their own lives.
The city of God lives side by side with the city of darkness.
God still raises up holy men and women to inspire us by their example.
The point I am making is that she probably shouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place. I have a friend who adopted three children from Russia. One had been thrown out a 5th story window by the parents, but no one would adopt them because he was “too old” at age 7.
The wife of our priest of several years ago contracted a deadly form of bone cancer as a young woman. Our priest fell in love with her and married her, knowing about the cancer, when he was a seminarian. The doctors told her that getting pregnant could make the cancer “explode”. She wanted to leave her husband something of herself and of course understood that once she died, he couldn’t get remarried. She got pregnant, had the baby, the cancer did indeed “explode” and she died. Her son is now a fine young man who reminds his father everyday of the wonderful woman he married.
Why couldn’t he remarry after her death? I thought only those who had committed adultery couldn’t re-marry?
God will bless this woman abundantly.
Amen!
“Why couldn’t he remarry after her death?”
Orthodox priests cannot marry after they have been ordained, only before.
Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that.
Prayers for her family.
Friend of mine discovered she had hodgkins disease while she was pregnant.
She delayed chemo to give her baby good chance at life.
Almost 2 years later her daughter is strong and healthy and so is she.
Prayers for your family.
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