Life quality or quantity?

If cancer comes for you, as it did last week for Sen. Edward Kennedy, what would you do?

It's near impossible to reach my age in America (a youthful 56, by the way) and not have real-life cancer stories to tell.

I've known several Las Vegans, as I am sure most Review-Journal readers have as well, who received a diagnosis of a treatable cancer of one kind or another and beat it. God bless 'em.

I've also known a person or two who has received an initially grim cancer diagnosis, only to find hope in a second opinion at a more specialized cancer facility. Their lives were either substantially lengthened past the initial diagnosis, or the cancer disappeared. They beat the house ... for now.

But all the people I have had the privilege to know who were diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer had an important decision to make: Fight it and hope to live longer, or don't fight and live better.

For example, I knew an Episcopal priest who caught a diagnosis similar to Kennedy's. One day he's living life and (as he would tell you, taking it for granted) the next day he's counting his breaths.

He decided the cure was worse than the disease. He opted out of treatment and lived well for a couple of months.

Then, the cancer overtook and killed him. He was a brilliant guy, loved and admired. Many of his friends and parishioners begrudged his decision to "give up" or "check out early."

But he liked the call and warned his complaining friends of the perils of self-absorption.

On the other hand, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Though her chances were slim, she elected to fight. After surgery, a painful recovery and the standard brutality of cancer treatment, she lived about two years past her diagnosis.

But it was a hard two years.

Weeks before she died, I had the pleasure of accompanying her for one last visit to her beloved home on Molokai, Hawaii. She had what essentially was a week-long living wake as friends filed in night and day to visit her one last time. (My Hawaiian friends will know what that's like.)

On that trip, I asked her about her decision to fight. She could have elected against surgery and, perhaps, traveled and lived reasonably well for six months.

She said she didn't regret the decision. She'd do it again as an example to her kids. In life and death, she was an optimist and a fighter.

At the time, I remember thinking about that old Robin Williams line: "If it's not one thing, it's your mother." To me, those two years looked like a living hell. Wouldn't six good months be worth trading for 24 miserable ones?

My more thoughtful friends tell me that I have the perspective of a healthy person, and that I ought to think more about the benefits of suffering. They use words such as "sacrifice" and "joy."

My thoughtful friends may be right.

Nevertheless, the news of Teddy Kennedy's cancer moves me beyond thinking of him as just a politician. He's just a man -- albeit a national example -- now beginning to play his final hand.

How would you play it?

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com) is president of Stephens Media and publisher of the Review-Journal.