In 1985, Andrea, a member of the French ultra-leftist group Os Cangaceiros, learns that she has cancer. After 5 years confronting the psychological and physical effects of chemotheraphy, she decides to turn her back on the medical system, choosing to die on her terms rather than live on those of the French health service and its almost complete domination by economic imperatives. To begin with, she writes two letters: one to the nurses who had been looking after her, the other to her friend Bella. What follows is the making of her own end, an assertion of living against a society which produces illness and isolation.