<p>"Roger Ebert cant remember the last thing he ate. He can’t remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn’t happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory it wasn’t as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz’s ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren’t they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.</p>
<p>Ebert’s lasts almost certainly took place in a hospital. That much he can guess. His last food was probably nothing special, except that it was: hot soup in a brown plastic bowl; maybe some oatmeal; perhaps a saltine or some canned peaches. His last drink? Water, most likely, but maybe juice, again slurped out of plastic with the tinfoil lid peeled back. The last thing he said? Ebert thinks about it for a few moments, and then his eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he looks out into space in case the answer is floating in the air somewhere. It isn’t. He looks surprised that he can’t remember. He knows the last words Studs Terkel’s wife, Ida, muttered when she was wheeled into the operating room (“Louis, what have you gotten me into now?”), but Ebert doesn’t know what his own last words were. He thinks he probably said goodbye to Chaz before one of his own trips into the operating room, perhaps when he had parts of his salivary glands taken out but that can’t be right. He was back on TV after that operation. Whenever it was, the moment wasn’t cinematic. His last words weren’t recorded. There was just his voice, and then there wasn’t.</p>
<p>Now his hands do the talking. They are delicate, long-fingered, wrapped in skin as thin and translucent as silk. He wears his wedding ring on the middle finger of his left hand; he’s lost so much weight since he and Chaz were married in 1992 that it won’t stay where it belongs, especially now that his hands are so busy. There is almost always a pen in one and a spiral notebook or a pad of Post-it notes in the other unless he’s at home, in which case his fingers are feverishly banging the keys of his MacBook Pro…"
[Print</a> Roger Ebert: The Essential Man](<a href=“http://www.esquire.com/print-this/roger-ebert-0310]Print”>Roger Ebert Cancer Battle - Roger Ebert Interview)</p>
<p>It’s unimaginable that one person has to endure so much pain. He has a remarkable resolve to continue on and find the joy in life - an example to us all.</p>
<p>I grew up watching Siskel and Ebert, and while Siskel was very much the film connoisseur, Ebert always loved the action flicks or cheap laugh movies, thoroughly aggravating Siskel (clearly on purpose). They were fun to watch and I’m sorry they couldn’t grow old together doing what they did so well.</p>
<p>Yes, it could have been edited better to explain earlier what happened to him.</p>
<p>"Seven years ago, he recovered quickly from the surgery to cut out his cancerous thyroid and was soon back writing reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times and appearing with Richard Roeper on At the Movies. A year later, in 2003, he returned to work after his salivary glands were partially removed, too, although that and a series of aggressive radiation treatments opened the first cracks in his voice. In 2006, the cancer surfaced yet again, this time in his jaw. A section of his lower jaw was removed…</p>
<p>Ebert spent more than half of a thirty-month stretch in hospitals. His breathing tube has been removed, but the hole in his throat remains open. He eats through a G-tube — he’s fed with a liquid paste, suspended in a bag from an IV pole, through a tube in his stomach. …"</p>
<p>It’s a terrible situation, but he seems to have the strength of character to make the best of it.</p>
<p>“There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one afternoon after someone parting looks at him a little sadly. Look how happy I am.”</p>
<p>Thanks NSM, I know I am just too lazy to read an entire article, but after initially skimming, I thought he had Alzheimers! (Can’t remember this, can’t remember that)</p>