• Article by: MATT SEDENSKY Associated Press
• March 9, 2013 - 11:52 PM

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.  – All the time-stamped rigors of daily journalism are behind her, but the pace of Susan Spencer-Wendel’s life has only been hastened. She is dying. And dealt a diagnosis she knows she can’t beat, the race is on to finish.

Her greatest story. Her toughest assignment. Her final deadline.

Spencer-Wendel’s job as a court reporter at the Palm Beach Post made her a local fixture, reporting on everything from the 2000 recount to Rush Limbaugh’s legal woes. But what was once a constant rush to be first with her courthouse scoops has become a dash to live her remaining days joyfully, complete a long goodbye to those she loves, and record it all in a book that has drummed huge interest and multimillion-dollar book and movie deals. The clock ticks forward as her body is betrayed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, and yet so much is left to do. Her life has been full of happiness and she sees no reason her last days should be much different. “Life is full of chapters,” she said.

‘I am not gone’

Spencer-Wendel was on autopilot, locked in a timeworn routine of breaking news at the Post and “navigating the daily dance” at home with her three children. That day in 2009 was just like every other, until she noticed her left hand, scrawny and starkly different from her right one.

She went through a year of medical tests and a subsequent year of denial. When the verdict was finally delivered, there was no surprise.

Reflecting on the diagnosis, she was overcome with a strange feeling of gratitude, for the 44 years she had lived with nary a health problem to speak of, for the career, the family, the travels. Before long, a road map was in place for her remaining time.

She would travel the places she wanted to go, surround herself with the people she loved, prepare her family for what’s to come. She would live. Joyfully.

She went to California to find her birth mother; to New York, where her teenage daughter tried on wedding dresses for a glimpse of a day they’ll never share; to Budapest, where she and her husband retraced footsteps of an earlier life; to the Yukon with her lifelong best friend; to the Caribbean, to Cyprus, and on and on.

Along the way, she wrote stories about two of her trips for the Post that were so heartbreakingly recorded they caught the eye of HarperCollins, which gave her a $2.3 million deal, and Universal Pictures, which followed with a seven-figure offer of its own. She sprinted to continue her travels and to put them in writing, tapping out the vast majority of her book, “Until I Say Goodbye,” on her iPhone using just her right thumb.

She believes it is the best thing she has ever written.

Spencer-Wendel, now 46, lives the best she can, hoping to impart lessons with her parting choices. “I am not gone,” she wrote. “I have today. I have more to give. I know the end is coming but do not despair.”