My illness was starkly revealing: Cancer survivor Lance Armstrong

Lance's realization:

My illness was humbling and starkly revealing, and it forced me to survey my life with an unforgiving eye. There are some shameful episodes in it: instances of meanness, unfinished tasks, weaknesses, and regrets. I had to ask myself, "If I live who is it that I intend to be?" I found that I had a lot of growing up to do as a man.

I won't kid you. There are two Lance Armstrongs, pre-cancer, and post. I returned a different person, literally. In a way, the old me did die, and I was given a second life. Even my body is different, because during the chemotherapy I lost all of the muscle I had ever built up, and when I recovered, it didn't come back in the same way.

Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't know why I got the illness, but it did wonders for me, and I wouldn't want to walk away from it. Why would I want to change, even for a day, the most important and shaping event in my life?

Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour [de France], because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.

Read another of Lance’s stories from his memoir, It’s Not about the Bike.