Born in a Russian-Jewish community near Minsk, he came to the United States with his parents when he was age 3. If anyone I have ever known loved life, my father did. Intuitively, my father felt certain that there was a connection between the deep sense of loss he had felt and the appearance of the cancer in his gut. Later, his physician found prostate cancer that had metastasized to his lung. Six months later, a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was diagnosed in his abdomen. “I felt like my gut was just torn out of me,” he told me as we talked about the diagnosis in his cluttered book-lined study. Six months earlier he had suffered a deep disappointment about a book project he had been working on. His physician told him he might have 6 months to live. In 1980 my father, Max Lerner, was diagnosed with cancer. I will tell you three stories about hope in cancer. There is always something worth hoping for in the face of a difficult illness. A wise man once said to a group of cancer patients in the Commonweal Cancer Help Program: “Above all, never give up hope.” The truth in those simple words has stayed with me through the years. This chapter is about the uses of hope in cancer. On Never Giving Up Hope: Three Stories Wrestling with the Angel Paths of Hope and Ways of Healing Chapter One Collaborative for Health and Environment (CHE).The Courage & Renewal Network of Northern California.
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