nominees. In March 2003, Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow announced that they would blue-slip all Bush judicial nominees from Michigan because Bush refused to renominate Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis, two Michigan nominees to the Sixth Circuit whose nominations the Senate Republicans had refused to process during President Bill Clinton's second term. Helene White was, at the time, married to Levin's cousin. Contrary to Levin's and Stabenow's wishes, Hatch gave Saad, McKeague and Griffin hearings, and passed the three nominees out of committee. Furious, Levin and Stabenow convinced their caucus to filibuster the three in order to prevent them from having confirmation votes. The Senate Republicans increased their numbers in the 109th Congress. Tensions between the Republicans and Democrats rose dramatically as the Republicans sought to break the filibusters of ten Bush court of appeals nominees (including Saad, McKeague and Griffin) by using the nuclear option. In order to defuse the explosive situation concerning the use of the nuclear option and Democrats' obstruction of President Bush's judicial nominations, fourteen moderate Republican and Democratic senators called the Gang of 14 joined together to forge an agreement to guarantee certain filibustered nominations up or down votes. Henry Saad and William Myers, however, were expressly excluded from the deal. After the Gang of 14 agreement in the Senate in 2005, Neilson finally received a floor vote in the Senate on October 27, 2005. (Fellow Michigan Sixth Circuit nominees Richard Allen Griffin and David McKeague received were confirmed by the Senate in June.) She was confirmed by a 97-0 vote, with both Michigan senators ultimately voting in her favor. Her confirmation came almost exactly four years after her initial nomination. Neilson was the seventh judge nominated to the Sixth Circuit by Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. She received her commission on November 9, 2005. Illness and death After being nominated by Bush, Neilson learned that she had myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood disorder that eventually required her to undergo a bone marrow transplant in 2003. Though greatly diminished physically, Neilson returned to work and, following confirmation, moved her chambers to the federal courthouse in Detroit. On January 25, 2006, Neilson succumbed to the lingering effects of her illness, and died of lung failure in Detroit at the age of 49. Due to her illness and death, Neilson served for only two months on the Sixth Circuit