"It forces you to be honest," she told the Inquirer last year. "We say to the kids, 'We're going to take out the cancer.' And they say, 'What if it comes back?' And I say, 'It might.' They say, 'Will it kill you?' I say, "I don't know,' which is the truth. I say, 'We all die. But we're fighting to do everything we can.'"