This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Existential dread. That's what my guest, Annabel Gerwit,

says her new memoir is really about. It's the kind of dread she experienced after getting her

diagnosis of stage four lung cancer. She got the news in 2020 in the early days of the COVID

lockdown. To make matters worse, she was separated from her

husband and they were divorcing. Odds are she would have been dead by now, but she has a form of

cancer that's responsive to a new form of targeted therapy that turns off the gene that has gone rogue.

But the cancer eventually outsmarts the drug,

often in as little as a year and a half. And then it's onto radiation and chemo and a ticking

clock. Though the drug is still working for Gerwitch after five years, the future remains uncertain.

Over those five years, she's become a patient advocate,

become a mentor to other cancer patients through a program in which she was mentored,

and she's involved with helping medical researchers gather evidence of patient reactions to new

therapies. Her new memoir is called The End of My Life is Killing Me, The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker.

She comes up with some great titles. Her previous books include, wherever you go, there they are, stories about my family you might relate to.

You say tomato, I say shut up, a love story. Fired, a book inspired by her experience of being fired by Woody Allen.

The New York Times bestseller, I See You Made an Effort,

compliments indignities and survival stories from the edge of 50,

and you're leaving when, adventures, and downward mobility.

Annabel Goerich, welcome to fresh air. I'm glad you're

alive. Thanks, Terry. So one of your doctors made an interesting analogy that's the opposite of the

warrior analogy, where like the cells are declaring war against you and you're declaring war against

them. He said, these are cells who've lost their identity. They don't know who they are anymore.

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