Science Times: Katherine Russell Rich’s moving piece on surviving breast cancer
Because stories sometimes seem to get different play online than they do in print, we inadvertently missed an important and moving story in Tuesday’s Science Times.
Katherine Russell Rich (disclosure: we’re friends) wrote about living 17 years after a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer. Each year, on Jan. 15th, she goes to a website for people with the same diagnosis, and posts a short message: I’m still here.
Within days, a thunderous chorus comes back, 200 voices, 300. A few of them ask, “How can this be?” Sometimes they begin, “I’m crying.” Many answer in kind: “I’m here, too. It’s now three years.” “Five years.” “Three months.” “Seven.”
What we’re doing, in a way, is checking for lights in the darkness.
Rich writes that when she was classified as stage 4 (reserved for the most advanced cancers), she was given a year or two to live. Nothing was the same after that.
I enacted every New Year’s resolution, past and future, all at once. Quit work that had grown stale and became a writer. Wrote a book. Went to India on assignment, fell in love with the language that was swirling around me, went back to live for a year and learn Hindi.
What would you do?
Read this piece. As I said in a note to Kathy, it’s inspired–and inspiring.
- Paul Raeburn
