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Write an essay that should include a summary of the article, "One Woman’s Fight to Die Her Own Way".
This book describes the ordeal of Andrea, a member of the French ultra-leftist group Os Cangaceiros, who, in 1985, learns that she has been diagnosed with cancer. After dealing for five years with the psychological and physical effects of chemotherapy and radiation she resolved to be back on the medical system, thus choosing to die with freedom rather than live on the French health services and the economic obligations related to them. She starts by sharing two letters: One to her nurses in the hospital explaining that she chooses freedom and fresh air then being guinea-pig and other to the dear friend, Bella telling that she refuses to live on part time basis. Following which, she expounds further on her decision with incorporated and mingling of several emotions.
Calling the experiments to be piddling and vile, she renounced to the brainwashing and lives the remaining days with full content. Earlier starkly juxtaposed with her decision, she has now gained an astonishing energy with the freedom granted to her. She finally understands how to tame her emotions and breaks free of all the apprehensions. She addresses hospital as an alienation that instills powerlessness into the patients who “bow to the inevitable and lose the will to live. She explains her situation by giving the example of a fly caught in honey jar except that the jar was filled with the poison in her case. In 1987, she transformed herself by making some promises. Most moving was not granting her malady to dictate her death and accept death as her ally. This commitment helped her to organize her perceptions and notions of the world with her illness that lead her to become mature. She starts to draw attention to the singing of birds, girls talking and draws comfort by making herself believe that they all might have a lesson for her. During this period, she also equips an insatiable thirst for life. She explains this enthusiasm by comparing herself to a vampire who looks for new strength in a frenzied environment.
This tale of a brave woman captures our utmost attention and her sharing of the experience with peers, and the readers give a clear insight of a cancer patient to the outside world. Her decision to live and rejoin her friends and her mindset of giving worth to her life and not succumbing to the shadow of her death imparts a great social message to every reader. However, her stern disregard to the hospitals and the doctors depicts the gloomy and pessimistic side of the author. Her abhorring disregard towards medical system might inculcate fear and jitters in those undergoing the same situation. Her apathy and insensitive notion towards medicine and science put the medical system to obscurity as contribution and development of medical sciences cannot be disregarded. Apart from that, she never ceases to inspire her as she acquires a strong will to live and starts loving life and even goes on to say that “This social absence of death is identical to the social absence of life” (Dorea and Nicholson-Smith).