Therapist Dying of Cancer Leaves Viral Goodbye Message: 'I Was Completely Shocked,' Husband Says (Exclusive)

On June 1, New York psychologist and author Sarah Mandel posted a video on social media that shocked even her own family members.

In the message, Mandel, who was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2017, announced her own death, just weeks shy of her 43rd birthday.

“If you’re reading these words right now, I’m dead,” read the caption of the video, which featured a mix of personal videos and photos. “I wrote this message the week I was told I had weeks or months to live.”

“Just a year ago, I would never have thought in a million years that I would want my death to be posted on social media,” she continued to write in the headlines.

But “life is unpredictable and full of surprises,” she wrote, revealing that the support she received from “old friends, new friends and strangers” helped her face even the “hardest days of this cancer ordeal.”

We all need a hand to be held sometimes, she wrote.

As the video came to a close, Mandel shared her love for her “beloved” husband and their daughters: “I’m going to write it here, and if I could, I’d write it everywhere. Sophie and Siena, I love you and I’m so proud of you, maybe alone somewhere beyond our concepts of infinity.”

Her husband, Derek Rodenhausen, says in an interview with PEOPLE that he saw the video after going to Instagram to check if anyone had posted the news of Mandela’s death.

I was completely shocked, he says. – She didn’t tell anyone about it.

Although her older brother, Benjamin Mandel, had no idea this would happen either, he says the mother of two always saw the world “a little differently”.

Sarah Mandel.

Courtesy of Rachel Forman

“There was a family story where we went on a trip and she saw this kind of bleak winter landscape with a crow in a tree, because everything was kind of gray and dark, and she said, ‘That’s beautiful,'” he recalls.

After that, she went home and drew a colorful and happy picture.

Sarah studied art at Bard College, where she met Rodenhausen, now 42, after studying abroad in Italy.

The two got married in 2010 and had a daughter. Sarah’s eventual career transition into psychotherapy led her to graduate school at Columbia University and a PhD in psychology from Rutgers University.

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From left: Derek Rodenhausen and Sarah Mandel.

Courtesy of Rachel Forman

In 2017, while pregnant with Sienna, Mandel, then 36, was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer after feeling a lump in her breast.

“I thought, ‘This is probably just a blocked milk duct, so we’ll be careful,'” her brother explains. But it was not better.

Just before the birth of her daughter, the doctors did an ultrasound and a biopsy, and it turned out that she had cancer.

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After chemotherapy and radiation therapy, Sarah began taking the drug Herceptin, which “kept the cancer at bay,” according to her brother.

“She came back to a state with no evidence of disease, which was miraculous,” adds her husband. “Then we had a couple of good years where she was in pretty good health again.”

Sarah Mandel.

Courtesy of Rachel Forman

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But by 2021, Sarah started having headaches.

She went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where an MRI showed the cancer had spread to her brain.

“Then it was just a matter of trying to sort it out, which involved a number of different types of medical therapy, again radiation therapy, and that kind of kept things quiet for a while, but eventually it progressed,” says Benjamin.

From left: Sarah Mandel and Benjamin Mandel.

Courtesy of Rachel Forman

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Sarah, who closed her practice in 2021 due to illness, continued to publish Little Earthquakes: A Memoir in April 2023.

“When she started writing it, she started weaving in memories and pieces of her own life, and it became a memoir … but it also has a self-help component to help people know how to navigate their own traumas,” she said. the husband says.

Although Sarah wasn’t a “social media person,” Rodenhausen says she started using her accounts to document her life and treatment because she “still felt like she had something to give.”

At the end of her life, according to her farewell video, “thankfully she was very calm and comfortable in her final days of rest. As she had been throughout her life, she spent her last night surrounded by love. She was hugged by her girlfriends, Sienna and Sophie, just a few hours before she died.”

Sarah Mandel.

Courtesy of Rachel Forman

More than a million people have viewed her message on TikTok since it was posted on June 1. More than 3,000 users commented, and many expressed their condolences.

Her brother says she lived her life with transparency in “the good and the bad” and “let go of the feeling,” a lasting message “for all of us to really embrace life.”

For Rodenhausen, seeing the “beautiful” outpouring of support inspired especially for their daughters felt like a touching final gift from his wife.

He adds: “I just loved her incredibly for those 22 years and we had a wonderful family.”

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Source: HIS Education