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The question

How close have you come to dying?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

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Eve Ensler

American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Nine years ago I discovered I had stage 3/4 uterine cancer and went through nine months of excruciating surgery, illness and chemotherapy. In that time, I touched death and it was the most powerful transformation of my life. I was forced to learn to take care of my body.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 June 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

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Lance Black American screenwriter, director, producer and activist
On a flight between Beijing and London with Team GB divers. There was a fire on the plane. We landed on a long-abandoned strip in Siberia. Two days later, the same flight attendants told us we had beaten the odds by surviving.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 June 2019 source ↗
Tom Lubbock Art critic
It is a very rare affliction. A GP would expect to meet it once in a career and this form of brain cancer is unpredictable and dangerous. Usually, this tumour might give you only a two-year span since its discovery. I have had two operations and one course of radiotherapy and now three chemotherapies (one currently starting). My death is, in a sense, imminent. I say to myself: I am dying. Something in my head is hurrying to kill me.
Recorded The Observer, from the journals he kept between 2008 and 2010; published on the Guardian website under the title 'When Words Failed Me', 7 November 2010 source ↗
Aidan Gillen Irish actor
Last year, driving in California, I found myself on the wrong side of the road. I was 30 seconds away from hitting two cars coming the other way.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 May 2017 source ↗

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