Health

Smoker for 35+ years. Went cold turkey for 20 years.

But she went in to have a pencil-dot-sized spot removed from one lung at Memorial Sloan Kettering. In one year, both lungs had freckles of cancer and it was terminal.

The tragedy was she didn't know b/c my father, a retired physician, intervened and told her doctor not to tell her; he'd tell her. But he didn't. And you know when you're dying. Mom was in the hospital in bed and her doctor came by. Mom grabbed her by her white lapels and shook her, demanding to know if she was dying. As Mom had less than a week left, the doctor admitted it.

My mother was left with less than a week to make choices. And boy, was she mad at our father.