If we are fortunate enough to reach the age of eighty-five, one in every two men and one in every three women will at some point experience the painful moment of hearing a diagnosis of cancer from a doctor. The conversation below appeared in the comments beneath a post about cancer. Because of the beauty of the response written by Lisa, a patient living with cancer, to a young man named Mitch, I have translated their exchange below.

Mitch: Last year I lost a friend to cancer after he fought it for three years. Three years of painful struggle and a painful experience of living that could barely be called life: chemotherapy, radiotherapy, several operations, and finally death. According to his doctor, even if he had refused all of those treatments, he would still have experienced a gradual and painful death over several months. If I ever receive such a diagnosis, I will choose the quickest way and end my life alone, because I do not want to impose suffering on the people around me or endure such terrible suffering myself. I would not impose either the costs of treatment or the burden of caring for someone with advanced cancer upon anyone.

Lisa, replying to Mitch:
I am sorry you lost your friend. I am a grandmother, and although I understand everything you have written with my whole being, I have never felt that I am a burden upon the people I love.

I cared with love for my grandfather and grandmother, my mother, and my parents-in-law until the moment each of them left this world. I stayed beside them and never felt that they were a burden upon my life.

I raised my two children, who are now in their mid-forties, and I now help them raise their children—my grandchildren, whom I love deeply and who love me.

Life is a cycle of love and struggle, of rising and falling. Life is birth, living and death. Death is the easiest part; living is the hardest. I am not willing to surrender this battle without a fight, for one reason: I feel that if I give up, I will disappoint those who have loved me.

They still need me. If it is time to go, I am ready. I am not afraid, but neither am I in a hurry.
This love and struggle give meaning to my suffering, and to ours.
Despite my diagnosis of cancer, at this moment I am a survivor.

.............................................................................
And I ... when I reached Lisa’s final line, I remembered a phrase I once saw on the shirt of a woman with cancer:
I Am Hope
For me, Lisa embodied that sentence.

Aydin Areta