I am sure you guys know why I am posting this.

I have had at least one friend who has dealt with cancer before, and another friend who once had Lyme Disease. They both actually did survive their ordeals, but the sad truth is that not everyone does. Do you know anyone who has dealt with a life-threatening illness? If so, what was the experience like --for you and/or them? Did the person survive? Pass away? Still going through the illness?

alot of my family have actually been wiped out by cancer, i wont be a misery merchant and go on about it but it wasnt a nice experience. A lot of my family were in Peru and their medical facilaties arn't as good as England and so we visited them knowing full well they were going to die within the 2-3 weeks we were there, there was a lot of laughing and joke telling in the first week and start of the second but towards the end it was really emotional.

Recently though my grandads been battling with cancer and so far he's survived through the odds but now he's coming to the age where it really is unstoppable, but he's lived a long full life so i guess its not too bad and if there is a heaven im sure my relatives will be there, they were caring, wholesome people.

Well, yes, I've personally went through a life-threatening disease called meningitis, and I almost died, but instead became fully deaf.

As for other people? I'm not sure, all the people in my life died either from accidents or a elderly death.

I have been fortunate enough of not knowing the trauma or pain that one goes through physically or emotionally due to having illness and being there for another family member. no one here in the states which is just my family (parents & siblings) has had one, but I have had sisters of my grandma, and other grandparents who died of illness. as well as great grandparents.

My maternal grandfather died of throat cancer before I was born. My maternal grandmother had some kind of illness that was causing her to just sort of waste away, but the hospital killed her through negligence before they diagnosed it. Several members of my dad's family died from old age, heart attacks, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. The Alzheimer's deaths are honestly the hardest thing to see. No matter how strong of a poker face you think you have, if you visit a family member who is in the later stages you will leave in tears because it is the most heartbreaking thing ever. My aunt had breast cancer, though she beat it thankfully... though she and many other members of the family are destined for lung and liver cancer down the line.

As for non-family members, at least one has had cancer and won. The most interesting story is my fiance's... he legally died when he was five years old for about ten minutes. They never found out the root cause, but he had suffered a grand maul seizure and several smaller ones. He hasn't had one since he was a kid though.

My grandfather died of lung cancer. He had a tumor that was apparently the size of a golf ball. I was only nine when he died, but it still hurt when it happened. =/ I had only seen my grandfather a few hours previous and then my uncle calls me and my parents and tells us that he's dead.

Anyway, me, personally? Because of my epilepsy, I used to have Grand Mal seizures for the first three years of my life. I may have died from them, I suppose, but the medication I was on controlled them quite well. I've also had pneumonia before and spent some time in the hospital for it, but the doctors took very good care of me. 

And a girl that goes to my high school also had Lyme Disease. It was a complete mystery for MONTHS, what she had. I've only talked to her a few times, but it still scared me. I didn't want her to die. =/ She was in an article in the Oregonian or one of the more local papers sometime last year. A year later, as in now, she is cured as far as I know. 

My friend had cancer in third grade but survived.  It was really weird thinking that a kid could be affected by cancer then.

well my dad got diabetes around a year back(he's fine now )but that's about it

Oh... yeah... my grandmother has emphysema from years of smoking. She has a lot of trouble breathing because her lung capacity is so small. I don't see how the rest of my family can look at her and still keep smoking. It baffles me.

I have had two people that I can think of right now. I had a distant aunt who died of breast cancer over 10 years ago, and I had a friend get diagnosed with bone cancer when he was 15. He died less than a year after his diagnosis. I didn't know my distant aunt well, but the friend was hard to take. A lot of us paid to have shirts made during a performance we had shortly after he had passed.