Farewell to a Fellow Cancer Fighter

Ever since the Ted Koppel special "Living With Cancer" I was drawn to Koppel's best friend Leroy Sievers and his blog "My Cancer" on NPR. Leroy spoke so honestly and eloquently about what it means to have this disease, to fight this disease, to live with this disease. It felt good to read his posts about the humor and the horror of cancer and all else in between. On August 16th, 2008 Leroy Seivers passed away. The following is the obituary from NPR.

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Journalist Leroy Sievers, who covered wars, genocides and natural disasters in more than a dozen countries — and who chronicled life after his cancer diagnosis for NPR on-air and online — died Friday. He was 53.

In his radio essays, in his podcast commentaries and on the blog, My Cancer, Sievers addressed the polite silences that surround cancer. He described his early internal debates about whether it was worth it to buy new pants and shoes. He spoke frankly about his hope that he would live long enough to read the final installment in the Harry Potter series. (He did, reporting avidly on the 759-page volume in a blog post written late at night, immediately after he finished the book.)

"Leroy gave voice to a topic that we are very uncomfortable with — death and dying," McDonnell said. "My Cancer had a face and a heart and a smile."

Why Blog? Because 'No One Walks This Road Alone'
In May 2007, Ted Koppel hosted a three-hour, prime-time Discovery Channel documentary, Living with Cancer, in which he interviewed his friend and longtime colleague. In interviews before the documentary aired, many reporters asked Sievers variations on one basic question: "What do you get out of writing the blog?" He concluded one My Cancer post with an answer: "A daily reminder that none of us walks this road alone. What could be better than that?" Sievers blogged about his cancer almost every day. Even on days that he could "forget" about the disease, he argued, it was important that he share his reflections for the many readers who didn't have such a momentary reprieve.

Written by Shomial Ahmad