Well, since this has been bumped, the acquaintance I mentioned in the earlier post is still hanging in there. I’d be surprised if he makes it another year, but he’s sure beaten the odds so far.
One theory is that cancer is not a disease, like pneumonia or tuberculosis, but more like to an autoimmune disorder: your body loses its ability to prevent cells’ otherwise natural tendency to grow out of control.
At the age of 91 my grandmother had breast cancer and a mastectomy. It never came back, and she died a month before her 108th birthday. But the knowledge she’d had it was always in the back of my mind, because cancer is so sneaky.