Editor’s note: Follow live Kansas City blizzard coverage here.
As a child in snowy Nashua, New Hampshire, Ginger Cone — “C.o.n.e, like in ice cream cone,” she said — remembers the days when she’d tough it out, and trudge to school through thigh-high drifts.
But now age 59, having battled back cancer three times, one kidney gone, and a pre-surgical appointment scheduled for Wednesday, Cone knew that the blizzard that blanketed the Kansas City area Sunday with up to a foot of snow wasn’t one she could handle alone.
For many, the deluge of snow, wrapped in sub-freezing temperatures promising to sink toward zero, raised the specter of power outages and busted pipes. But for Cone, having someone dig out her car and driveway in Gladstone bordered on existential.
“I usually try to do as much as I can with the help of my daughter,” Cone said. Except her adult daughter, too, has had difficulties, living and working at home after being diagnosed three years back with an inoperable brain tumor that thankfully is benign, but still has its own effects