Lisa Gutierrez
14 October 2008
Kansas City — The blast of a terrorist's bomb could have ended Rosemary Bichage's life 10 years ago, but it didn't. Small and feisty, she fought back.
Through painful operations that rebuilt her mangled body. Through a traumatic brain injury that forced her to relearn her ABCs. Through the amputation of her right leg.
Ms Bichage didn't just survive. She thrived after the bombing of the US embassy in 1998. She left Kenya and made her comeback in Kansas City with help from scores of people she called her "angels."
Stomach cancer
But in a twist of fate that even she struggled to understand, stomach cancer this week stole the life she fought so hard to rebuild.
Ms Bichage, 54, died at the University of Kansas Hospital as her husband, Chris, held her hand.
When she learnt she had cancer in September 2007, everything was starting to get better after 10 difficult years.
She had just completed a graduate degree in social work from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She had just started a job with Jewish Vocational Service, an NGO that helps refugees and victims of world conflict resettle.
"She finally felt, 'OK, I can start all over,'" said her daughter, Jeanette Bichage, 25, a student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City told The Kansas City Star. "And then, to be hit with this.'"
Kansas City came to know Ms Bichage as a survivor. She was in her office in downtown Nairobi on August 7, when the neighbouring embassy exploded, rocketing Bichage off the fourth floor of the bank where she was a lending officer.
Dr Jeffrey Colyer, an Overland Park plastic surgeon, was one of the first to examine her in Nairobi.
"She should have died there," said Dr Colyer, who at the time was a member of the International Medical Corps. "When I met her, she had unbelievable injuries."
For weeks, Ms Bichage lay in a coma and later underwent painful skin grafts at a German hospital. At Colyer's urging, she came to St Luke's Hospital in Kansas City.
Colyer performed at least a dozen operations. He and several other local physicians donated their services.
During rehabilitation, Ms Bichage lived at Bishop Spencer Place, a retirement home, and later stayed with various new friends in their homes.
"She was remarkable, but God sent some pretty remarkable people her way," said Jeanette. Mr Chris Bichage spent time with his wife in Kansas City at the beginning of her recovery and later returned to Kenya, where he is a businessman.
Couple's twins
After the couple's twins, Linda and Jeanette, graduated from high school, they moved to Kansas City at their mother's request and enrolled at the university, where their mother also took classes.
"Rosemary was a role model to us Kenyans," said Mr Daniel Ochweri, a friend of the family. "She was our pillar."
Bichage pushed all four of her children -- three daughters, Moraa, Linda and Jeanette, and a son, Robert -- to be educated. But she also wanted them to be good people, her daughters said.
She was shopping at Wal-Mart in August 2007 when she collapsed and was taken by ambulance to hospital.
Four days later, doctors told her she had inoperable stomach cancer. She didn't cry in front of her children. After they had gone, their mother wept in a nurse's arms.
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