Dying of cancer: a patient's recollection of her illness and of her doctors.

A personal account of a patient's long ordeal with cancer of the tongue is presented. The explicit journal begins at the time that a lesion was first detected and ends approximately 4 1/2 years later, just 8 1/2 months before the patient's death from local disease. Important principles of clinical diagnosis and patient management, vividly underscored by this case, are reviewed and discussed.