Swayze Memoir: Dying 'Is Okay'

Dying was “okay” with Patrick Swayze, he wrote in his upcoming memoir. Though his cancer diagnosis at first seemed like a “cruel joke,” he “began thinking to myself, I've had more lifetimes than any 10 people put together, and it's been an amazing ride.” More excerpts from The Time of My Life published by the New York Daily News, Newsday, and Us:

• “I had been having some digestive trouble, mostly acid reflux and a kind of bloated feeling, for a few weeks,” he wrote of learning he was sick. “I've had a sensitive stomach my whole life, so I hadn't thought much of it, but lately I just couldn't shake the constant discomfort.”

• "My doctor told me my chances of surviving for more than a few months weren't high, and I had no reason to doubt him."
• “I continued with chemotherapy all the way through the shoot,” he writes of his A&E show The Beast. “But I never took any painkillers since they dull not only your pain but also your sharpness.”
• “How grateful I am that you chose to love me,” he writes of wife Lisa Niemi. “I know that because of you, I've found my spirit. I saw the man I wanted to be. You are my woman, my lover, my mate and my lady. I loved you forever, I love you now and I will love you forever more.”

(More Patrick Swayze stories.)