RIP Ray Fosse, a man whose career was ruined because some overhyped overrated Johnny Gung Ho asswipe singles hitter decided to treat an exhibition game like fucking Game 7.
Surprised that he lived this long,
Yes, 16 years battling cancer is a long time. Fought, as the say, the good fight against inevitability.
Sorry, and it's not your fault, but you've triggered me with that last sentence.
One doesn't fight cancer. One gets it and either survives or doesn't. It's not a battle, and framing it as such fits our need to see things in terms of wins and losses, while ignoring the scientific reality of the disease itself.
But it doesn't help anyone who has it to see it as a battle, especially, when ultimately framing it as such is merely setting them up to feel a sense of failure once they've succumbed to that inevitability to which you've referred.
Apologies to anyone who is sensitive to this discussion, but I've seen too many people die from cancer, and none of them were ever helped by framing their last few years, months, weeks and days as a "fight" to the finish.
Sorry for the Fosse family, too.