Rachel Hope Doran (Staples ’14) called her mom, Lisa, on Friday, July 13, 2018. She was living with her boyfriend, Rob Lincoln, in NYC and felt too sick to travel to Westport. The CVS quick med center had diagnosed her with pink eye, but that didn’t seem right.
Alarmed, Lisa insisted, “I’ll come in and pick you up or you can take an über. You need to come home.”
Rachel took a train home. At 3 a.m. that morning she awoke, severely ill. Her parents rushed her to the ER in Bridgeport. A rash appeared on her skin. The staff determined she had foot and mouth disease and sent her home.
Saturday afternoon, Rachel was in distress and the rash had worsened. They went back to the ER. This time she was admitted to the burn unit and diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a rare skin and mucous membrane disorder.
On Sunday she was intubated. Later that week she was put in a medically induced coma. Packed into her small hospital room were Lisa, her father Alan, boyfriend Rob, and friends. They promptly organized shifts - 4 hours, 24/7 - so Rachel would always have someone by her side.
After 14 days in Bridgeport, she was transported to New York Presbyterian/Columbia University’s ECMO unit. In this unit, she was placed in a machine that pumped and oxygenated her blood outside of her body, independent of her heart and lungs.
When Rachel was eight years old, her grandmother taught her how to sew. She continued practicing the craft with family friend Julie Beitman.
Rachel sewed herself a pair of cool pajamas, with “loose-legged bottom her friends loved,” describes Lisa. Soon she was making colorful fleece and flannel pjs for cousins, aunts, bffs, once for a New Canaan cheerleader gala, and to sell at craft fairs and a few area stores. She coined her budding enterprise “Rachel’s Rags.”
She taught her little sister Ellie’s friends how to sew, and assisted Ellen Gang, a Westport mom who founded Fashion Camp, with her classes.
For the 8th-grade talent show, Rachel staged a catwalk with “funky t-shirts” and blaring music. It “was like a New York show,” recalls Lisa. A friend’s mom did the hair and make-up. For SHS formals and the first days of school, Rachel designed her own dresses. She joined Staples Players and created numerous costumes for their productions.
Though fashion came first, she was also an excellent watercolorist and loved music.
She enrolled at Cornell University and studied Fiber Science and Apparel Design. “It’s about as cerebral as you can get with fashion,” Lisa smiles.
During her junior year, she created a lauded exhibit for the Cornell Costume & Textile Collection, Go Figure: The Fashion Silhouette & the Female Form. Using historic clothing, she traced the contemporaneous phenomena which shifted the “ideal” shape of the female body and the accompanying style trends throughout the century.
That summer she moved to New York City with Rob, interning at Li & Fung, a creator of supply chains for the retail industry. A little over a month after moving she became ill and called her mom.
Watching over Rachel in intensive care consumed all of the Dorans’ time. Aside from an “amazing” ECMO coordinator and a social worker who checked in periodically, there were no family services offered at the hospital, not even a chair by her ICU bed.
Ellie, five years younger than Rachel, would sit in the packed waiting room to be near her.
The closest hotel to NYP/CU was expensive and almost always booked, so a friend found a nearby boutique hotel. This friend, with the contributions of others, footed the bill. Lisa and Alan stayed by Rachel’s side 18 hours a day, going to the hotel only a few hours each night to shower and sleep.
Lisa slept with her clothes on, the tongues of her shoes out, phone beneath her pillow, so she could jump out of bed and run to the hospital in five minutes should a doctor call.
Only with the support of a swath of friends and relatives were Lisa and Alan able to devote time to Rachel while giving Ellie some semblance of normalcy in her life.
Friends set up a Go-Fund Me page on August 1, 2018, so Lisa could take leave from her job to be with Rachel.
16 days later, on August 17, Rachel passed away. Outside, torrential rain ripped through the city. Inside, Lisa, Alan, Rob, and Rachel’s grandparents quietly stood witness to Rachel’s last moments. They brought Ellie’s sweatshirt so she’d know her little sister was with her, too.
Weeks later, in January, the Dorans were overwhelmed with bereavement cards and the daunting task of thanking the scores of people who kept them afloat during that harrowing month.
“What do I do?” Lisa worried to her friend, Kathy Coon.
Kathy promptly replied, “Throw a party.”
Lisa, Kathy, and friends huddled around a table in Panera, hammering out the details of a party to be thrown eight weeks away in March, Rachel’s birthday month.
As planned, their first annual Rach’s Hope PJ Gala kicked off on March 2, 2019, followed by three others, including this year’s gala on Saturday, March 11 at FTC. At each, guests are encouraged to wear “PJ Chic” in honor of Rachel’s Rags.
The menu will feature Tito’s vodka and tacos from Bodega - “She always said she’d get married on the beach with Bodega and a Tito’s vodka bar.” They’ll shake a special cocktail, the Hope 21, with Tito’s, fresh cucumber, fresh mint, lime, and soda; the cocktail with which they toasted Rachel’s 21st birthday.
Money raised will go to their nonprofit organization, Rach’s Hope.
They created Rach’s Hope to “help people get through the unthinkable” - a child’s prolonged stay in intensive care. The Doran’s support network enabled them to be present during Rachel’s final days, but not everyone is as blessed with a proximal cocoon of love and logistical help. “You don’t think of eating or where you’re going to sleep. People stepped in and took over our life,” explains Lisa.
From bill management and counseling resources to transportation vouchers and über eats cards for siblings, Rach’s Hope aims to alleviate a bit of the trauma and expense of navigating a heart-breaking situation, and to address some of the unknowns.
The summer after Rachel passed, in 2019, Lisa and Alan received a call from then-state senator Will Haskell, a classmate of Rachel’s. He had organized the commemoration of a bridge near exit 18 in her honor. He writes, “She was a masterful costume designer and among the most patient and kind people I’ve ever met. It’s just a small, but hopefully meaningful, indication of how much she meant to those who knew her.”
RachsHope.org
“You don’t think of eating or where you’re going to sleep. People stepped in and took over our life,” - Lisa.