Not the Last Goodbye

I knew the prognosis. Sooner or later, it would come back. I could slow down the inevitable; I could gain a few years. But there was nothing I could do to make this cancer disappear forever. So this was it. This was the relapse. The Big One.

Nineteen years after his original diagnosis, David Servan-Schreiber submits to an emergency MRI that confirms his greatest fear: his brain cancer has returned. Here, he shares his coming to terms with the news and, with courage and candour, examines his life from the point of view of one who understands that his illness is terminal, yet nevertheless lives every day fully and with hope.

As the author of and spokesman for the Anticancer program, which has given hope to millions of readers around the world, Dr Servan-Schreiber frankly acknowledges the ways in which he departed from his own advice. Reaffirming the principles of the program — from nutrition and exercise to rest and meditation — he also weaves in the stories of a number of clinical cases, and offers a rebalanced approach, emphasising certain elements that he himself tended to ignore.

The story he tells here raises many of the most complex and personal questions about how we choose to live and how we prepare for death, striking a delicate balance between the limits of medicine and the hope that sustains us as we confront them. It is powerful, honest, and truly inspiring.