My Best Friend Died Of Lung Cancer

I started reading Cathy Seipp when I moved to Los Angeles in the Spring of 1994.

She wrote an entertaining column about the Los Angeles Times -- her favorite newspaper! -- in the monthly Buzz magazine.

I exchanged some email with Cathy in the summer of 2001 and we finally met that winter at a party organized by Cathy and her friends Amy Alkon and Emmanuelle Richard. These monthly parties were conducted under the auspices of the Los Angeles Press Club.

I was at another of these parties in the summer of 2002 at The Standard hotel in downtown Los Angeles. I was kicking back with Cathy and Amy and I said to Cathy, "Your hair is different."

It was different. It was a color and style I did not recognize.

She told me later that night that she had lung cancer. That she had been undergoing chemotherapy and all her hair had fallen out. She said she was wearing a wig.

Her hair did grow back.

She had stage four lung cancer.

She had never smoked.

She battled hard for the next five years. She got in all the walking she could. She got in all the chemo she could. She did everything she could.

She finally succumbed in the Spring of 2007.

Here's more about Cathy Seipp and her courage.

My mother died of cancer.

She first had breast cancer before I was born. She had a mastectomy. Then she gave birth to me in May of 1966. A year later, she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Over the next four years, she shrunk to 60 pounds and finally died.