The Choice

1. What is the "choice" referred to in the title?
- The choice whether to give their daughter a cancer fighting medicine that tastes very bad and causes damage to all new cells being created.

2. Is it a real choice?  Why/why not?  What is the alternative?
- Not really. This is one of the best options for fighting the cancer. The alternative could be less effective medicine or no medicine, but they feel it may be too strong or not strong enough.

3. Why does the author use the word poison in the first line?
- To bring power to the substance, to invoke feelings of danger.

4. The author's daughter wants to play with a toy that is intended for older kids.  Why?  Do you agree with her?  
- The girl doesn't believe that she will live to be 8 years old, old enough to pay with the toy. It depends on how the treatment is going, whether it works or not.

5. If you thought you might not live to the age of 30 what would you want to do right now?
- There's a lot of things I'd want to do. Experience more life at an earlier age could be important.

6. Under what circumstances does it make sense to endure discomfort--or even force it on a loved one-- in service to a greater/more important cause?
- If in order to sustain life, you must endure pain, so long as the benefit out-ways the pain, it can be done.

7. Is suffering a necessary condition of life and love?
- That depends on the degree, the amount, and the reasoning. It shouldn't be required, but often, it is a side-effect of these.

8. Most readers don't share the author's circumstances, but we feel an emotional response to his words.  Why?

- They can imagine themselves in the position. Empathy can alter emotions, placing others in a feeling they have not experienced. They may not feel the pain, but they attempt to emulate it.