Stay strong, Christopher

Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens was on Anderson Cooper 360 last night, marking his first appearance on television since being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Hitchens' father who died at 79 of the same disease, said he has wondered "why me?"

"You can't avoid the question however stoic you are, you can only bat it away as a silly one," he said. "Millions of people die every day, everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly, if you smoke which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties."

"You said you burned the candle at both ends," Cooper asked, and Hitchens answered "And it gave a lovely light." Cooper then followed that up with "Do you think part of that way you lived is responsible for this?" Hitchens then responded "It would be very idle to deny it, and I might as well say to anyone watching, if you can hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails you may be well advised to do so."

As for his chances of surviving (this gets quite sad), Hitchens said he is "realistic" regarding his diagnosis, "I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it's a certainty you'll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it's an awful process. That you can't escape, you're going to get that no matter what. Then the torture may or may not be worth it or it will be torture by execution."