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A physician relates his experience of watching his daughter die of cancer: “A Greek aphorism warns, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ A calamity that I hoped/presumed never would occur now seems likely – I am going to outlive one of my children. I am very unhappy, and my wife asks if we […]

A man terminally ill with cancer and his friendship with a hospice worker: “Andres was in his brother’s living room on the Northside last August as he told his story. A small group of family and friends was his audience. No one flinched as he covered the tougher parts – everyone there knew the story. […]

The complicated birth of the big-screen 007. After several false starts, author Ian Fleming handed his character to two relatively small-time film producers: “It is 1959, and Sean Connery is putting in time in a cornball live-action Disney feature called Darby O’Gill and the Little People. He’s the second male lead, billed beneath not only […]

A son attempts to get an unpublished manuscript of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle for his dying mother, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader: “Mom is completely nonplussed. I am a little hurt, but then I realize I haven’t seen Mom once the past several weeks with her hands on a paperback or her Kindle. […]

An interview with the humorist and essayist about his book, Half Empty, his Academy Award-winning short film, and his recurrence of cancer: “GROSS: You were diagnosed with cancer in your 20s. Now you’re in your 40s and have a cancer diagnosis again. Are you dealing with it emotionally differently now in your 40s than you […]

A love letter: “Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed […]

[Part One of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] After a Leukemia doctor and researcher develops the disease himself, he finds an effective treatment when his colleagues sequence his cancer genome: “Dr. Wartman’s doctors realized then that their last best hope for saving him was to use all the genetic know-how and technology at […]

[Part Two of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] Genetic sequencing has led to promising new treatments for cancer, but we still have a ways to go: “Scientists had compared the entire genetic sequences of the tumor cells invading her body with those in her healthy cells, searching for mutated tumor genes that could […]

[Part Three of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] A genetic test for people with eye melanomas reveals whether patients are likely to live or die with “uncanny precision”: “The test identifies one of two gene patterns in eye melanomas. Almost everyone in Class 1 — roughly half of patients — is cured when […]

A couple learns about a cancer diagnosis: “I watch your hand starting to shake as you write down information that will sit on a small square of paper for months, impossible to get rid of. I stand two feet away and watch your lips. I hear you say, Is that all you can tell me…. […]