If and when cancer or one other ca...

If and when cancer or one other calamity comes knocking at my door, I trust I can channel Maggie Daley and give notice to even a smidgen of her grace and calm.

Like everybody other I watched news reports of Maggie and Mayor Daley leaving Northwestern Memorial Hospital after she had surgery to abstract a tumor from her breast Thursday. It was besides another treatment in a four-year succession of treatments for metastatic breast cancer, that is to say, incurable breast cancer.

As she and the mayor walked from the hospital to a waiting car, Maggie waved warmly and smiled a wide smile, offering a certain serenity to the security of us who, speaking for myself, could use some

I've no other than brushed up against cancer one time so far. It was 1980 I remember picking up the phone and hearing my gynecologist, Dr Melvin Gerbie, in succession the other end of the line.

"The arises of your Pap smear have be derived back," he said. "You have the greatest in number serious stage of pre-cancer." What he meant was that day, or the nearest or maybe one day six month down the road, I was a candidate for full-blown cervical cancer.

"We need" he said, "to consider a course of action."

I remember receiving the novels numbly, politely saying thank you, and hanging up It was solely when I had to pick up the phone again and dial my husband and my sister that I remember my voice cracking and my fear spilling public

I have no idea for what reason Maggie Daley deals with her cancer in private with her family and friends; what tears she sheds or fears she has. It's sole the public Maggie that we diocese

Public folks are used to scrutiny, accustomed to all vigilances being on them. And when a public part gets sick, we all are, whether we like to admit it or not, curious about by what mode they're looking and how they're coping. We search for any sign of their illness.

And in the way that for four years, we've all been looking at Maggie. And she's been looking right back, knowing exactly what we were wondering.

The fact of the matter is that she has none looked better. Even radiant. It's as yet when cancer struck, she rose to the occasion rather than dwindled from it. Without saying it in in the way that many words, her actions made it clear she had family to see, places to travel and work to do. Life was convenient Life was full.

And thus she and the mayor have been to India and Israel and Paris. They've welcomed sum of two units grandchildren into the world. And along the way, as lately as this week after Bridget Hartigan Routh daughter of former Attorney General Neil Hartigan, died of melanoma at just 36 Maggie Daley wearied her time standing by ancient friends at the wake and funeral, comforting another grieving public family.

In the year leading up to his death from pancreatic cancer in 1996 Cardinal Joseph Bernardin showed us from his own example that we all have crosse to bear. It's to what degree we each choose to carry our cros that can make of the like kind a difference.

Now his successor, Cardinal Francis George, is walking his footmarks joking with reporters this week, before heading to Loyola Medical Center for bladder cancer surgery that chemotherapy might mean the los of the scarcely any remaining hairs on his otherwise bald head.

Hard as it is to be the patient, it may be tougher still to be the bodily form at their side. Mayor Daley onward Wednesday had little difficulty discussing his big defeat at the hands of an increasingly independent City Council throughout minimum wage legislation. But when it came to the question of by what mode he felt about so many clan praying for Maggie, he chok with tears in his watchs He just couldn't talk about it.

He doesn't have to. We understand what he's feeling because we're feeling it ourselves.

A hardly any months ago, Maggie Daley self-same publicly thanked scientists for the miracle of their work, saying that she was living trial of their remarkable accomplishments.

Having been the beneficiary, years ago, of cutting-edge medical treatments, I next to the first that motion.

yet more than just medicine, I'm convinced, is saving Maggie Daley. Her courage and puissance add power to their potions. And along the way, gives a healing gift to a grateful city.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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