Maureen Callahan

And she says, I want to congratulate you on your beautiful and beautifully written essay.

It's neither of those things.

It's pretty pedestrian.

Again, I'm very sorry that she's been through these traumas.

They are extremely commonplace.

You know what?

If you want to read something about someone who is diagnosed with cancer and has real wisdom to impart, read a book called When Breath Becomes Air.

It was written by a brilliant young doctor who was diagnosed with incurable, I believe it was lung cancer.

That book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for months.

That is a gem and I recommended it to my father when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

He read it and loved it.

In fact, he gave it to his wonderful oncologist.

He wrote about it from both the POV of a brilliant doctor whose mind was going to be applied to curing cancer.

the most difficult diseases, and then becoming diagnosed with a disease that was not only incurable, it was terminal, and it was going to take him in a pretty ugly way.

That is something worth reading.

Or my friend, my dear friend, Susanna Cahalan, who wrote an incredible medical memoir called Brain on Fire.

Not only did she come through a rare autoimmune disease that could have killed her, or at the very least had her sent to a mental institution where

But she wrote about it with such originality and heart and humanity that that book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list forever.

It has since sold over 1 million copies.

I'm sorry, Amanda Peete, that this happened to you, but that does not make you a writer.