LT: I really believe that there should be a definite line between opinion and newsgathering. If my editors can learn from what I say in my column and decide how they’re going to cover cancer, then that’s great. I don’t feel comfortable as a patient telling them how to cover the news side of the story when obviously I’m approaching it from a very biased perspective. I don’t think I would be comfortable as a journalist writing an actual news story about cancer because I think there would be a certain lack of objectivity.

SS: As a journalist, you’ve been trained to ask difficult questions. But you’ve said that it’s been difficult for you to ask yourself these tough questions. Why? Have you allowed yourself to face these questions?

LT: It’s always difficult to turn the reporter’s notebook back on yourself. To confront your own mortality and the daily, deeply personal trials of your fight in front of more than a half million readers is sometimes hard. With each column it gets easier, mostly because I get tons of reader response from people on the same road who seem appreciative that I’m putting into words what they often can’t.

SS: How has writing this column affected the way you live with cancer?

LT: It’s really enabled me to give voice not only to myself, but to thousands of others who are going through the same thing that I’m going through, and that has been helpful for me. I think that I approach the subject more sensitively. I would really like to get across the point that there is a real void in traditional journalism in how we write about cancer. There’s so many other dimensions of the disease that go unexplored. I’m happy to be a part of that netherworld and try to explain to readers the grey aspects.

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