All-Star Cincinnati Reds catcher Ed Bailey -- famous in the 1950s -- died of throat cancer on Friday, six months after he was diagnosed with the disease. He was 75.

Bailey, a five-time All-Star, started his baseball career with the Reds in 1953. He went on to hit 28 home runs for the team in 1956 and then went on to play for the Milwaukee Braves, the Chicago Cubs, and the California Angels. He played in his final game in 1966.

Bailey is survived by his wife, Betty, and four sons, Jack, Jeff, Joe, and Jim Bailey of Knoxville.

Holding Tight, Letting Go: Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer is a book written by Musa Mayer, a breast cancer survivor. Few books discuss the realities of metastatic breast cancer. Women with breast cancer live in fear of recurrence. For at least a third of those diagnosed, the disease will eventually spread. When this happens, most people assume it means an immediate death sentence.

The voices in this book speak of a different reality: that women with metastatic disease generally go on to live with their disease, often for many years, and that the time they have can be full and meaningful.

This is a great book for anyone dealing with metastatic breast cancer or even those who have been diagnosed and have a fear of recurrence. I read this book and it helps because my imagination can be far worse than the reality of the situation.

Here are a list of the chapter titles:

• Voices of a Forgotten Population
• Dread, Uncertainty and White-Water Rafting
• Seventeen Stories of Metastatic Breast Cancer
• The Shock of Recurrence
• The Problem of Knowledge: Doctors, Information-Seeking and Statistics
• Medical Treatments and Choices
• Hope and Healing for the Rest of You: Complementary Therapies
• Living with the Side Effects and Symptoms
• Families and Friends Speak: "Its happening to us, too."
• Light and Shadow: Stories of Remission, Work and Identity
• Final Gifts: Disease Progression, Hard Choices, Last Days
• Still Here: The Anatomy of Courage

I never predicted counseling would be part of my treatment for cancer. I am well-acquainted with the practice of talk therapy -- I have a graduate degree in counselor education and spent seven years counseling college students with presenting issues such as roommate conflicts, alcohol use and abuse, sexual assault, and depression -- but I never envisioned myself on the receiving end of such a relationship, never imagined I would be the one prescribed an anti-depressant and referred for cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Yet I have spent the past two years talking candidly -- and at times weeping uncontrollably -- with a talented young woman who has given me the tools to cope with life in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis. And on Tuesday, the culmination of these two years will result in one final session. Together, my counselor and I will recount what has happened to me, how I have handled it, how I will proceed for the rest of my life.

At the end of my one-hour session on Tuesday, I will be set free. I will walk the white, sterile halls of a hospital basement, travel in an elevator up one flight, and exit a building I never knew could become so familiar. I will allow the outdoors to greet me, and for the very first time since cancer invaded my life, I will accept the challenge of living forward -- without the therapy that helped save my life.

On Tuesday, my case will be closed. On Tuesday, a new version of my life begins.

I have had a hard time keeping my counseling appointments lately. Life keeps getting in the way, and counseling keeps getting pushed to the side. The last time I called my counselor to cancel -- due to an emergency room trip with my three-year-old -- I mentioned that my inability to keep up with sessions was perhaps a precursor to an eventual termination of our counseling relationship. My counselor -- Lindsay -- said this was maybe an accurate assessment, that we should discuss the possibility of an ending point. We haven't yet discussed it, though, because I have not made the time to contact her. I have continued to leave counseling on the back burner.

But today Lindsay sent me an e-mail to check in. She wrote that I am probably going to be okay on my own now -- in the aftermath of cancer -- and that we should have one final session to reflect on my progress over the past 16 months. I have not replied to Lindsay -- not because I am busy with other things but simply because her words made me cry. They still make me cry, hours later. I'm not exactly sure why. And I'm not exactly sure how I will follow up on scheduling my very last session.

I assume my tears -- my sadness -- are part of the healing process, part of the separation anxiety I feel each time a part of my treatment ends and a part of my life moves on. I assume I am sad at the prospect of leaving a vital part of my recovery behind, about leaving the comfort of my counseling chair, about leaving Lindsay. The possibilities are endless. And I suppose we will cover all possibilities when Lindsay and I sit down for our last, final, concluding session -- when we recall how much I have grown since the day we first met, when I could barely mutter a word about cancer without weeping uncontrollably, when I could barely manage to find pleasure in my days, when I could barely imagine that life could -- and would -- offer me peace and happiness.

Today, life is good. And it's clear that counseling is no longer necessary for my survival. But that doesn't make it any easier to make my final appointment. To contemplate saying my last goodbye. To tackle life completely on my own. Which is what I will do -- in time -- so I can continue moving on, away from breast cancer.

Numbness is wearing off, and I am beginning to feel twinges of pain surrounding the area where my port was once located. I can't see what was done to me today -- because the area is carefully bandaged -- but I know from what I feel that my skin has been cut and sewn back together. I feel the skin tightening, stretching, pulsing and while it's not terribly comfortable, it's pretty minor compared to the pain of so many other cancer procedures -- like my lumpectomy, my chemotherapy, my nausea, my neutropenia, my allergic reactions to various medications.

So I am fine, following my port removal that was predicted to last a few hours but somehow took most of the day. The actual procedure took just one hour, and the twilight drug that kept me in a peaceful funk allowed me to relax while the port that was tunneled into the tissue underneath my skin was precisely taken from my body. It was an uneventful experience -- except for a few tears that dripped from my eyes during the final moments before my surgery. I think it may have been the power of the moment -- the moment signaling the end of my active cancer journey. Or it may have been the power of support offered by my sister and my three-year-old son who accompanied me today. Or it may have been the power of the response I gave a nurse who had just seen my little guy and asked me if I planned to have more children. My response -- probably not, because of cancer -- seemed a little too final, a little too sad.

It may have been the combination of everything, all adding up over the past two years, that brought tears to my eyes today. But for now, the tears are gone. And the port is gone. For now, my cancer is gone.

I was present for death only one time in my 36 years of life. I consider this both a bad and a good thing. It's bad because I did not want my grandmother to die -- and watching it happen made it so real, so vivid, so painful. I don't think I would have ever chosen to watch my grandma die -- to watch her slip from consciousness to coma, to observe her altered body once death arrived, to witness the movement of her body on a stretcher as it was wheeled out of the house from the bedroom I still see every time I visit my mom's house. But I think I am lucky really -- and this is the good part -- because I got to be with her during her final moments. I got to watch her body as it lay still, peaceful and calm and still breathing. I got to talk to her and although she could not respond, I believe she could hear my words. And it makes me happy to know my grandma may have known I was with just prior to her flight to heaven. And after her flight, I got to touch her cool hands. I got to feel the power of the passing of one life -- a long life -- and I got to feel the comfort of a death that was not ugly or painful or difficult. It was sad -- it's still sad -- that my grandma died three years ago. But what a privilege it was to be part of the day she left this world.

Susan DeWilde left this world in much the same way -- with loved ones by her side. She was a fighter and had conquered several rounds of breast cancer, a tumor in her spinal cord, uterine cancer, lymphatic cancer, and then leukemia, which took her life at the age of 53. I don't know this from Susan herself but from her friend, Christy Mack -- who helped her accept her death and guided her into her own final moments so that she could escape her pain and die peacefully. Christy writes about her beautiful friend and her empowering death in an article that appears in the August 2006 Oprah Magazine. Titled Friends to the End, Christy's story details how she soothed her friend, cradled her hand, and talked her through her last breaths. She helped her on her way during a time her friend feared most. Christy writes, "What she and I shared the night she died was a precious gift of friendship, emotionally profound and sacred in its perfection. It broke my heart. It strengthened my soul."

This I understand.

At the same Atlanta meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology where the breast cancer drug Tykerb was touted as perhaps the next wonder drug, findings were also released concerning chemotherapy and end-stage cancer. It seems that many patients in the last weeks and days of their lives are receiving chemotherapy -- when it is clear that there is no hope for survival. Perhaps patients don't want to give up and so they choose to fight to the very end. I think I would be hard-pressed to throw in the towel if a doctor thought I might benefit from continued treatment. Miracles do happen.

Doctors may be part of the problem, though, according to researchers. Patients don't want to give up -- and neither do doctors. But cancer specialists report that overly aggressive treatment gives false hope and puts people though unnecessary suffering and costly ordeals when hospice would be a more effective route. The purpose of hospice -- to help people die with dignity and in comfort -- is ineffective, however, when it's not used to its full potential. A large review of Medicare records showed in 1999 that nearly 12 percent of cancer patients died after receiving chemotherapy in the last two weeks of life. This was up from 1993 -- 10 percent -- and is probably higher today. These individuals could have been peacefully preparing for death and instead were suffering through the trials of harsh treatment.

The solution -- that must be implemented by doctors -- is a willingness to accept that there is a time to stop followed by an honest conversation with the patient whose cancer has spread widely and is incurable.

Another study presented at this Atlanta meeting revealed that some patients are not being offered newer treatments that might truly save their lives. New lung cancer treatments have extended survival from 20 percent at one year to 50 percent, for example. Yet only 11 percent of doctors in one Wisconsin study would refer such patients for treatment.

It would be nice to know for sure that one life is about to end, regardless of treatment, and to know that another might be saved because of treatment. And maybe one day -- when treating cancer is an exact science -- this will be a reality.