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🇰🇷 South Korea /Health & Science

When terminal cancer arrives, must every possibility be erased?

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Named sources Context piece
  • A Hankyoreh columnist reflects on a book of letters between a terminally ill philosopher and a medical anthropologist about illness, uncertainty and choice.
  • The philosopher argues that bad luck becomes unhappiness when a person allows one event, such as cancer, to define an entire life.
  • The writer connects the book’s ideas to her father’s long illness and argues that a person’s habits, temperament and preferences remain meaningful despite disability or memory loss.

A diagnosis of terminal cancer does not have to erase every possibility in a person’s life, the writer argues in a reflection on illness, uncertainty and human individuality.

The essay centers on “Illness by Chance, Death by Necessity,” a collection of letters exchanged by Japanese philosopher Makiko Miyano after she received a terminal cancer diagnosis and her friend Maho Isono, a medical anthropologist. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi later adapted the book into the film “All of a Sudden.” The film’s two leading actresses jointly won the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival.

Isn't the probability of something that might happen a weak form of fatalism?

· Maho IsonoIsono questioned whether a possible deterioration should determine Miyano’s decision about a scheduled lecture.

The correspondence confronts the pressure to find a reason for every misfortune. People may blame cancer on stress, family conflict, heredity or poor health management, even though careful living cannot eliminate illness and genetic predisposition does not determine everything. The writer recalls her father, who developed a brain lesion disability after sudden meningitis. Despite searching for information and questioning doctors, she never found a definite reason for his illness. She now tries to accept that he may simply have been unlucky.

I also do not know what might suddenly happen to me next month. It is simply that I have not been diagnosed with an illness.

· Maho IsonoIsono encouraged Miyano not to erase future possibilities because of her diagnosis.

The book’s discussion of probability challenges the instinct to close off the future when a serious diagnosis arrives. When Miyano wondered whether to cancel a scheduled lecture because her condition might suddenly worsen, Isono asked, “Isn’t the probability of something that might happen a weak form of fatalism?” She encouraged Miyano to keep the lecture and make an excuse if her condition deteriorated. “I also do not know what might suddenly happen to me next month. It is simply that I have not been diagnosed with an illness.” Miyano followed the advice, delivered the lecture and held several more events.

Miyano comes to see bad luck as a point and unhappiness as a line. Cancer is bad luck, she says, but it is not her entire life. She continued writing through pain, using her own illness to examine the uncertainty of living with disease. In her final letter, she wrote that she loved “a world full of beginnings with others through chance” and wondered whether the world might be so wondrous. She lost consciousness soon after writing the book’s preface and died 15 days later.

Cancer is something bad that happened to me, but I am not unhappy, because having cancer is not everything that I am.

· Makiko MiyanoMiyano distinguished a misfortune from allowing it to define her entire life.

The columnist says Isono treated Miyano not as a fixed point called a terminal cancer patient, but as a researcher deserving respect and a beloved friend. She wants to view her own father in the same way. Even after memory loss and prolonged illness, his habits, temperament and tastes remain his own, she writes, because a person’s individuality is preserved and completed alongside those who continue to see it.

I love a world full of beginnings with others through chance.

· Makiko MiyanoThe philosopher’s final letter expressed her acceptance of uncertainty and connection with others.
About this summary

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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