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She landed in that wild scenario.
“What would happen if you only had a year left to live?” said Amy Low, Palo Alto-based author and single mother of two.
For her, that question was a reality and she knew what she wanted to do.
“I thought, ‘you know what, I don’t think I have to floss anymore,’” Low said to a crowd at Kepler’s Books that erupted in laughter.
On Monday night, Low discussed her new memoir, “The Brave In-Between: Notes From the Last Room,” describing her humorous yet rugged account of the years following her Stage IV metastatic colon cancer diagnosis.
She was interviewed by Lisa Otsuka, her son’s former Advanced Placement Literature teacher, in front of a crowd of around 50 people.
In 2019, after experiencing slight fatigue and fever, Low was suddenly diagnosed with cancer and given a 15% five-year survival rate. Colon cancer often spreads to the liver and lungs, which surgery is unlikely to cure, according to the American Cancer Society.
While Low had beaten the odds with a healthy gut, she struggled to regain the health of her lungs. It was then that she categorized this stage of her life as the “last room,” or final place.
The book’s theme is based upon St. Paul’s letter to the Phillipians in the New Testament of the Bible, which was the last letter he wrote to a church as he was set to die soon.
In his writings, he advised people to focus on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, admirable, lovely, excellent and praiseworthy. These pillars outlined the chapters of Low’s book.
“They became lanterns in my room and they lit up all these different corners, and I started to see things through the vantage point of these words,” Low said.
Most people hope to arrive in their last room feeling old and tired, but Low, 48 at the time of her diagnosis, felt great.
She described it as a “dumpster fire of lame,” but on holy land as she began to see life as nonbinary, finding loveliness in between the good, the bad and in the mundane.
Low explores complex relationships with her children, friends, doctors, lover and ex-husband throughout the book.
Beginning the story discussing her ex-husband, Low said she didn’t want her children, who are the most important people to her, to feel resentment toward their father if he became the “main-stage parent.”
“Betrayal took away a part of my past that I treasured and cancer threatened to take away my future, but forgiveness might reveal an uncharted path, one made just for us,” Low read from her book.
Low’s memoir is a love letter to medicine, she said, one written for single parents going through a terrible diagnosis, but using humor as a space to breathe.
“Come for the cancer, stay for the other stuff,” Low said.