Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer

[Rum]

Have just read the article. As brave as ever. I hope his writing reflects how he really feels.

[The Dawktor]

What a great article!

[AnInconvenientScotsman]

Fantastically written, as always. It's good to see he's not let cancer take away any of who he is.

[Rum]

Fantastically written, as always. It's good to see he's not let cancer take away any of who he is.

I didn't. And it ain't, as he says, a competition and a 'battle'. That's far too easy.

[AnInconvenientScotsman]

Fantastically written, as always. It's good to see he's not let cancer take away any of who he is.

I didn't. And it ain't, as he says, a competition and a 'battle'. That's far too easy.

I never knew you'd had cancer Well done beating it though, to say the least

[kiki5711]

Fantastically written, as always. It's good to see he's not let cancer take away any of who he is.

I didn't. And it ain't, as he says, a competition and a 'battle'. That's far too easy.

Me too Rum. Don't you wish we could write a book and make some money from it too?

[Coito ergo sum]

Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer in June, and he opens up about the ordeal in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

"I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse," he writes. "The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. ... Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning. It took strenuous effort for me to cross the room of my New York hotel and summon the emergency services."

Hitchens was describing the events leading up to his hospitalization, in which he learned of his diagnosis.

"In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist. ... I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me," he writes. "Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read — if not indeed write — the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?"

Hitchens goes on to describe his decision to undergo chemotherapy (or "chemo-poison," as he describes it), which has resulted in weight loss, hair loss ("which I saved in a plastic bag so that it could help fill a floating dam in the Gulf of Mexico") and the lack of facial stubble.

Many Hitchens fans have discussed praying for him, a famous nonbeliever. Yet, in Hitchens's final paragraph, he lauds the "astonishing number of prayer groups" and promises to write on that topic at a later date.

http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1 ... eaper.html

[drl2]

Great article by Hitchens (of course) - glad to see he's facing this realistically. Sadly, from his descriptions of how far the cancer has spread already, I suspect there's not much hope of recovery. Ugh.

[hadespussercats]

Bad news!
He was definitely in the high risk group, but he knowingly took those risks.
Hopefully they got it early.

He knowingly took those risks. So I suppose he deserves whatever he gets. Nice.

[hadespussercats]

Also-- A pretty amazing, self-deprecating, mature, bittersweet article. Thanks for sharing it.

[maiforpeace]

Bad news!
He was definitely in the high risk group, but he knowingly took those risks.
Hopefully they got it early.

He knowingly took those risks. So I suppose he deserves whatever he gets. Nice.

I think you are reading more into what Faithfree (FF) was writing - all he wrote is that Hitchens knowingly took those risks, nothing more. FF is not a smug type of person.

[Animavore]

[Meekychuppet]

I just watched that on YouTube. He's hosed. He knows it.

[Rum]

I just watched that on YouTube. He's hosed. He knows it.

So sensitively put.

[Posse Comitatus]

I hadn't realised how bad he was.