I literally burst into tears when you said that she was 15! Yay, you! Btw, am visiting Albany right now where I started my journalism career and being a foreign correspondent isn't the fun you think it's going to be. In fact...meh. So, the Columbian doctor set you in the right direction!
7
Lovely story - we never know where our happy ending will end. Writing from husband's account, he was a happy house dad for 18 years and now we are both happily retired living on my more robust pension. Career isn't everything but family is.
4
You made me cry. Thank you for writing this. And I am filled with joy, that you are still here among us
6
Modern Love is why I pay to read the NY Times. This story is on the best I have ever read.
5
OMG, must read every word, and find out in the LAST SENTENCE that David's baby girl is now 15! Talk about a happy ending. AND these new drugs work miracles (in some cases). Thanks for telling your story, David. I won't forget it.
11
Great! Now I'm at work with a lump in my throat! Wonderful story!!!!
7
Big cheers to the scientists and researchers whose skills and hard work made your happy ending possible.
14
Ah, love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1
Beautifully written. Thank you!
5
Happy Father's Day. How lucky your daughter is!
8
whew! you got me at "now 15." Happy father's day to you!
19
Bravo David! We loved your novel, and we're happy to see you in the NYT.
3
Everything in life has a reason and it happens when it should be. This inspirational story leaves a pleasant taste to hope, love and sacrifice. Happy father's day Cuñadito!
5
Yes. It is all and only about love.
2
Modern Love has truly delivered this Father's Day.
13
Thank you for this wonderful reminder that love can, and does, impact everything in a positive way - even when the odds seem stacked against against success. Congratulations to you and your family and thank you for sharing your story/life. There may be so many others that are inspired by what you have shared.
5
A precious reminder of . . . you just have to trust!
7
Great story. "Life is what happens and we're busy making other plans." Thanks for sharing!
6
Wonderful writing. Happy to learn that you prevailed and are ensconced in life in upstate NY. Great demonstration of perseverance, plus very good measures of courage and love ...a great formula for meeting life's challenges. Mexico City would not have been easy, I think. Good choice made here.
5
David Kalish thank you ! You made me cry and you made me smile. Thanks to lovely Ingrid...for life ! For love ! It is what matters. Buy some Burrata and eat it with your tomatoes and basil with Ingrid and Sophie...and smile.
9
So lovely it gave me the chills!!!!
5
Thank you! I too am living with lung cancer, and it is so - SO - good to hear about people who have survived many years! Bless you, your marvelous wife, and your miracle daughter. Happy Fathers Day.
19
This is wonderful. Thank you.
2
Now "that's" a Modern Love article. Thank you! :)
12
Here's hoping for many more summers of sowing tomato and basil and may your home continue to be filled with that same art, laughter and piano music. Thank you for sharing your experience today, David. It has struck a chord and meant a lot to this perfect stranger. Wishing only the continued best to you, Ingrid and your daughter.
11
What a lovely ending --- thanks for a great story and best wishes to you
and your family.
and your family.
6
Beautiful. You can be the "correspondent from Upstate NY". ; ) Happy planting.
26
Agreed!
Wow. Just wow.
Not quite 16 years ago, I went thru chemo when my boys were 3- and 5 years-old and knew firsthand of the fears of the day. Who would father my sons? Would they forget about me? How would my (now ex-) wife manage financially? The permutations of painful outcomes were beyond my grasp.
I gained peace by asking myself over and over, "what am i afraid of right now, in this moment?" And the answer was always the same: nothing. My fears were all based on the future. And for that matter, when I investigated the pain I felt in the moment, it became humorous how much my belly hurt from the chemo. When I demanded to know if i would live, I'd smile kindly and remind myself that this was a concern set in the future. I discovered that in the present moment the most easily expressed emotion is gratitude. For this breath. And the next. And the next. Maybe gratitude is an essential ingredient for healing?
Thank you Modern Love and Mr. Kalish for bearing witness to another journey that resonates deeply...it's safe to say we're all cheering!
Not quite 16 years ago, I went thru chemo when my boys were 3- and 5 years-old and knew firsthand of the fears of the day. Who would father my sons? Would they forget about me? How would my (now ex-) wife manage financially? The permutations of painful outcomes were beyond my grasp.
I gained peace by asking myself over and over, "what am i afraid of right now, in this moment?" And the answer was always the same: nothing. My fears were all based on the future. And for that matter, when I investigated the pain I felt in the moment, it became humorous how much my belly hurt from the chemo. When I demanded to know if i would live, I'd smile kindly and remind myself that this was a concern set in the future. I discovered that in the present moment the most easily expressed emotion is gratitude. For this breath. And the next. And the next. Maybe gratitude is an essential ingredient for healing?
Thank you Modern Love and Mr. Kalish for bearing witness to another journey that resonates deeply...it's safe to say we're all cheering!
80
Thank YOU as well, Richard, for the reminder of the difference between fear in the present and fear in the future. And yes, gratitude in and for the present moment may well be the most easily expressed emotion.
4
and I have a lump in my throat - a teary one- from reading this. Glad for the happy ending. Beautifully written and love the humor.
33
I feel a lot of admiration for my compatriot, her sound decision to encourage you to have Sophie and her strength, she is a keeper!
22
Thank you for this beautiful essay with a happy ending (or beginning). How rare is that?!
28
Your story takes me back to when I was pregnant with my daughter and we were living with my mother-in-law while she went through chemo and radiation for lung cancer. We were both nauseous and didn't want to eat at the same time. My husband would make us both dinner and loving complain when we didn't eat it. The awareness that both my mother-in-law and I had something growing inside us didn't escape us, either. She enjoyed her only granddaughter for 3 months before passing on. You're story is beautiful. :)
60
Excellent! When I had chemo for breast cancer 10 years ago, I searched the internet in vain for "cancer humor." Everything I found at the time was pink & light. Mr. Kalish works that gritty stuff & gets gold. "Do me a favor & vomit more softly" is not an English-language sentence you see every day. Ten years later, my breast cancer returned, requiring a bilateral mastectomy & reconstruction last fall. My next surgery is on Hallowe'en, & I plan to write "Boo!" on my chest in bold market pen for the surgical team to unveil when they pull aside my hospital gown to go at me again with the needles & the knives.
37
Read "The Accidental Pilgrim" by Mary Erin O'Brien for a very funny and moving account by a breast cancer patient. Sounds like you and she are sisters in spirit!
1
What a beautiful (and a bit nerve-racking) story, beautifully written, with a beautiful ending.
7
What a gorgeous story. Thank goodness for happy endings!
12
Great story, witty and moving.
For the rest of us also living with a person with thyroid cancer, I think you needed to state clearly, however, that you have been diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer (at 3% of thyroid cancers the third most common form of thyroid cancer) rather than just refer to it vaguely as a 'a rare, incurable form of thyroid cancer'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medullary_thyroid_cancer
For the rest of us also living with a person with thyroid cancer, I think you needed to state clearly, however, that you have been diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer (at 3% of thyroid cancers the third most common form of thyroid cancer) rather than just refer to it vaguely as a 'a rare, incurable form of thyroid cancer'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medullary_thyroid_cancer
5
Strange, how our society loves to lambaste the poor for conceiving children in precarious financial circumstances, yet when a man with a serious cancer with a genetic basis decides to have a child, we heap praise and glory. I support his decision to have a child -- that's no one's business but his own what he is comfortable doing with family planning -- but I sincerely hope we can channel the same acceptance toward the poor who decide to start a family even without a fancy job and cushy salary.
14
I don't understand what would compel you to respond to this article by getting up on your soap box. David Kalish told a moving story, and your response is to lecture him and the readers about acceptance when the poor decide to start a family? No one's heaping "praise and glory" about his decision, or admonishing the decisions of others. That was not the point of the piece, and it's sad that that's what you got out of it.
31
I was surprised to find out the root of the word "Proletariat". It comes from the word Prole, or offspring. Bearing children is the one precious thing that the poor can do as well as the rich so that is why the poor (the proletariat) cash in on it. When you subtract judgement, this ability to generate the gifts that children represent, despite our bank account or life expectancy, is truly a beautiful thing. Children are our hope-our treasures.
10
Eva Klein -
Where are people "lambasting the poor" and "heaping praise and glory" on the essayist? Sounds like you're extrapolating from your own baggage and ambivalence.
Children are blessings. I am happy this person was able to conceive and raise a blessing against tough odds. It's a wonderful story.
Where are people "lambasting the poor" and "heaping praise and glory" on the essayist? Sounds like you're extrapolating from your own baggage and ambivalence.
Children are blessings. I am happy this person was able to conceive and raise a blessing against tough odds. It's a wonderful story.
17
best one so far....
13
How wonderful!! I laughed and teared and was so tempted to scroll to the end, but I didn't. Damn, David, congratulations on a life that continues to be well spent.
19
Stories like these are why I love Modern Love columns!
12
Great story. Thank you for sharing! And Happy Father's Day, sir.
19
The story is wonderful, with its happy ending, but I want to praise the illustrator too. He seems to be the perfect artist for Modern Love, and today's work was especially admirable. Those 2 people in a bathroom with all the details, seen from close, just drew me into the story.
28
Hi this is Ingrid, the one from the essay, and yes, that is the best illustration possible. That is me and David after throwing up and fighting for the toilet!
24
Just finished When Breath Becomes Air and felt the same tale unwinding before me as I read this column. So glad the resolution of this story is so much happier.
14
wow - the ending surprised me - did not see that coming. What a wonderful love story. It has made my day. Thanks for writing it and continued good health and happiness for a wonderful family.
28
Too many "Modern Love" essays involve self-absorbed, naive, or whiny people who have no concept of what a genuine problem really is. Mr. Kalish knows the difference between what is real and what is not, and he has expressed it in a marvelous and compelling manner. Dude, if you had gone to Mexico you would have become just one more "talking head" reporter, instead you have achieved so much more.
95
Happy Father's Day! Thank you for sharing your beautiful story of love, shared strength and survival.
27
Fight the good fight until the end. But none of us really knows when it is the end until it happens. In the meantime, good things will make the journey of life worth living. This story is a clear example of the strength within all of us and how this strength can be magnified exponentially if loved ones work together. Love this story. And the fight continues.
14
Surprise ending got me!
20
Beautiful story...Thanks for sharing. Wishing you all well!
15
What an awesome article! :)
23
Lovely piece - here's hoping for many more years of happy and healthy art, laughter, and piano music!
42
Hot damn, what an amazing story. It made me laugh & tear up. I'm so so glad for you and your wife.
108
David Kalish has written a straight forward account of changing symptoms and feelings as his dream of an exciting career is denied just at the point of achieving it.
Do some of us wish he had been able to spend what might have been his last months doing what he loved with the potential cost of giving up the chance for a life extended by all the tools modern medicine can bring? Certainly. I think most of us side with his wife in this love story and applaud her strength to demand his priority be caring for his medical needs and her courage to bring a child into the world knowing she might be the only parent the child would know.
This is a classic Modern Love essay which I suspect is meaningful for many NYT readers.
I
Do some of us wish he had been able to spend what might have been his last months doing what he loved with the potential cost of giving up the chance for a life extended by all the tools modern medicine can bring? Certainly. I think most of us side with his wife in this love story and applaud her strength to demand his priority be caring for his medical needs and her courage to bring a child into the world knowing she might be the only parent the child would know.
This is a classic Modern Love essay which I suspect is meaningful for many NYT readers.
I
54
Pieces like this are why I love this column.
69
So happy to read that 15 at the end. Thank you for sharing.
156
Beautifully written! So glad the ending is a happy one.
53
What a splendid story! I wish you only well on your continued path through life. Beautiful! (And perfect for Father's Day)
78
beautifully written, like a fairy tale. and, ending as all fairy tales should, with 'and
they lived happily ever after!"
they lived happily ever after!"
9