Worth Fighting For by Lisa Niemi Swayze, Simon and Schuster, $29.99
"There's a reason why people fight so hard to get better… because at some point someone will get better. Why shouldn't Patrick be the one?"
The fact Patrick's surname was Swayze, and the author of that plea, wife of 34 years, Lisa was married to the Dirty Dancing movie star makes no difference.
Cancer does not discriminate. Lisa's "beautiful man" changed from the flirt with a big ego she rebuffed at dance school as "not her type", to a humble man when he became sick, with "steady grace, strength and dignity."
Co-pilots in both the cockpit of their King Air 200 plane and on this turbulent voyage against aggressive pancreatic cancer, Lisa describes being "plunged into a nightmare I could not wake up from".
She ordered Patrick a late 57th birthday gift of a GPS, to navigate them on what lay ahead as he spent his final days at their ranch.
He died with Lisa at his side and it was only then his toweringly strong wife literally sank to her knees with grief. Unbelievably powerful.
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