Living proof: Survivors show strength

Many people, if given the chance to choreograph their death, would probably envision going gently into that good night by drifting off peacefully in their sleep, with no cares, regrets or pain, after having lived for several decades, even a century or so.

That option fades away for those with diseases and conditions doctors have given them little or no chance of surviving: stage 4 ovarian cancer, tuberculosis, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, an omphalocele, stage 4 leiomyosarcoma.

Newsday asked readers given these and other diagnoses to share their tales of long-term survival, which doctors and surgeons didn't think possible for most of them.

"I was told I had three months to live," wrote Janet Shavel, of Seaford, diagnosed in 2008 with stage 4 leiomyosarcoma, or soft-tissue cancer. She had 22 tumors, including one on her uterus that was the size of a basketball. "I was in shock . . . my sons, my mother, we felt like someone just stopped the merry-go-round of life and I was told to get off."

But she survived, as did Ali Bie, who was born in 1992 with her abdominal organs outside her body. An omphalocele meant she had to have surgery when she was just two days old to put her intestines and other organs back inside her body. Bie weighed less than 3 pounds at birth, and, like up to 40 percent of children with the condition, she had other birth defects -- a large hole in her heart, which required surgery once she reached 5 pounds.

In the two-part series "Living Proof," Newsday profiles 14 Long Islanders, "walking miracles" who faced down death, fought for their lives and won.