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What Is Early Word?
The Philadelphia Inquirer's experimental online "morning show", which began in Sept. 2005, went on hiatus in the summer of 2006, after a gradual shift to putting more of its content directly on Philly.com.



About the Host
Peter Mucha, husband and father of two, grew up in Cherry Hill and is a lifelong Philly sports fan. He's been writing and editing for The Inquirer for 18 years. His motto (at least for today): "If I'm not brief, give me grief."

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The Inquirer's ever-evolving way to start your day. Email. Phone: 215-854-2388.

Friday, December 09, 2005

'I Have Brain Cancer. What's YOUR Excuse?'
Yeah, what is my excuse, Fawn?

In an amazingly heartbreaking yet hopeful account, The Inquirer's Fawn Vrazo -- I don't care if she took the buyout, she's still ours -- somehow has the courage and guts and gratitude for life to write about telling her daughter the awful news: What started as breast cancer has become brain cancer.

This diagnosis might mean surviving two to three years.

"OK! I thought," she writes.

OK?

The headline above is her joking idea for a bumper sticker -- a message to "idiot drivers."

It's much more than that.

Now, after rounds of radiation, she continues, "Yet I am happy and calm and without stress, too. I found myself cheered just to be around to check out the ham prices. I feel as much in love with life as George did when he got back to the old Bedford Falls. ...

"Readers of these 'Cancer Chronicles' stories have often sent their prayers to me. I am utterly humbled by that -- prayers, for me, a stranger!"

This is why you should buy newspapers, people.

And why in reading, like life, you should hang on until the end.

Often the best things are found there.

Like the Fawn's expressions of happiness and gratitude.

And that bumper sticker. She's so right. What is my excuse?

Read the entire story. Visit her Cancer Chronicles Web site.


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