Esteemed journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich died Sept. 1, at the age of 81. A prolific author, Ehrenreich wrote seminal books and essays about economic inequality, feminism, and many other topics. But among her most celebrated works is a deeply personal one, which she wrote after being diagnosed with breast cancer:
I could take my chances with “alternative” treatments, of course, like punk novelist Kathy Acker, who succumbed to breast cancer in 1997 after a course of alternative therapies in Mexico, or actress and ThighMaster promoter Suzanne Somers, who made tabloid headlines last spring by injecting herself with mistletoe brew. Or I could choose to do nothing at all beyond mentally exhorting my immune system to exterminate the traitorous cellular faction. But I have never admired the “natural” or believed in the “wisdom of the body.” Death is as “natural” as anything gets, and the body has always seemed to me like a retarded Siamese twin dragging along behind me, an hysteric really, dangerously overreacting, in my case, to everyday allergens and minute ingestions of sugar. I will put my faith in science, even if this means that the dumb old body is about to be transmogrified into an evil clown — puking, trembling, swelling, surrendering significant parts, and oozing postsurgical fluids. The surgeon — a more genial and forthcoming one this time — can fit me in; the oncologist will see me. Welcome to Cancerland.
