Another victim of esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens, died last night of pneumonia - a complication of his cancer and feeding tube.
Here's a link to his last Vanity Fair article.
The crux of it is that he finally disavowed Friedrich Nietzsche's Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich st�rker (�Whatever doesn�t kill me makes me stronger.�). Although EricS can take comfort in the fact that since this did kill him, this criticism of Nietzsche seems misplaced.
Trial of the Will
He of course could not resist an cynical twist on another saying
[quote]But really, that�s to say no more than �There but for the grace of god go I,� which in turn is to say no more than �The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man[/quote].�
He had the best TX possible and I liked the way he described the pain of radiation: [quote]This put me in a rare class of patients who could claim to have received the highly advanced expertise uniquely available at the stellar Zip Code of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. To say that the rash hurt would be pointless. The struggle is to convey the way that it hurt on the inside.[/quote]
It's long but worth reading.
Charm