Earlier today I wrote a story about a woman who acquired the coronavirus and survived. She said she had felt fine and had no symptoms.

Also in that article, however, I mentioned the idea of balance when it comes to how we take in information right now. I mentioned we as citizens doing what we are being asked to do in a nation-wide effort to flatten this spread rate.

And here is a tragic news story to illustrate that point, to balance the particular message and tone I was shooting for in that article.

Sundee Rutter, a single mother of six who once survived Stage 4 breast cancer, who lost her husband several years ago, has died from the coronavirus in Washington State.

Obviously Rutter was a fierce fighter to have overcome what she has overcome. And yet her body could not fend off this virus.

Rutter’s best friend, Jessica Harris, cannot believe what has transpired.

“She was a wonderful person, and there’s not many like her out there anymore. Great friend, great mother, great wife, she was a wonderful person,” said Harris. “We’re pretty devastated, she beat cancer and lost the battle to Coronavirus? It’s just crazy.”

Harris said she’d been assuming, like many others, that all the panic over the virus was exaggerated.

A personal tragedy tends to change people’s outlooks.

“And then when I got the news of her, I was like ‘Oh my God, this is not something to play with, this is serious,’ and now my outlook is different.”

Harris said that her friend was especially careful about the spread of germs because of her compromised immunity from cancer treatments, but that she had to keep working to provide for her family.

Now that both Rutter parents are gone, there are six children, ranging from middle school to college, to worry about.

“Her children need somebody to help them because the oldest is going to be leaving college and trying to find housing so he can take care of his siblings,” Harris said through pain and tears. “And that’s really tough.”

“I want people to really know it’s not just the elderly people. It’s anyone and everyone who have compromised immune systems that are at risk.”

Once again, as I said in the earlier article, no personal philosophy or outlook on this can be black and white. We have to be balanced. We have to be vigilant while not panicking so much that we go crazy and buy up all the toilet paper.

Forgive the joke in this, a very somber article. But we all know what that toilet paper represents right now.

A GoFundMe is set up in the family name to help the children of the late hero and fighter, Sundee Rutter.