Susan Spencer-Wendel: 'Until I say Goodbye' memoir of terminally ill reporter to be published as her health worsens By Hayley Peterson and Daily Mail Reporter Her book will hit stores Tuesday and the movie rights have already been optioned but as Susan Spencer-Wendel's professional career hits its peak her health continues to decline and she faces the end of her life. The memoir, titled 'Until I Say Goodbye' took her three months to write. She typed her life story on an iPhone using only her right thumb, as all her other fingers have stopped functioning since she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease in the summer of 2011. On the edge: Her book is set to be released Tuesday, but Susan Spencer-Wendel's health has continued to spiral down as she can now barely speak Secure: With the right's to her book already optioned, Spencer-Wendel takes some comfort in knowing the financial windfall will keep those close to her provided for Confined: Spencer-Wendel can barely move or speak, and her husband does most things for her even giving her drags of cigarettes She first noticed something was wrong in 2009 when she undressed for bed only to notice her left hand had begun to wither in comparison to her right. 'You need to got to a hospital,' husband John Wendel insisted. After a year of medical appointments, tests, depression, and even the contemplation of suicide, she was finally given a diagnosis and an assessment of the years she still had ahead of her. Most ASL patients die within three to five years. Susan Spencer-Wendel wrote her life story on an iPhone using only her right thumb, as all her other fingers stopped functioning since she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Spencer-Wendel, center, gives her sister, Stephanie Harwood-Parlamento, right, and her best friend, Nancy Maass Kinnally, a special Christmas present of a gold necklace in the form of an infinity sign engraved with Susan's name 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, in a vain attempt to see the Northern Lights with her lifelong best friend; to the Caribbean, to Cyprus. Her trips formed the basis of a series of stories for the Post that caught the attention of HarperCollins who gave her a $2.3 million deal to write about her final days. Universal Pictures offered seven-figures of its own for the film rights. HarperCollins calls Susan's story 'a powerfully emotional, inspirational and irrepressibly joyous look at the things that matter most... Until I Say Goodbye is the fulfillment of her final wish: "To make people laugh and cry and hug their children and joke with their friends and dwell in how wonderful it is to be alive." Fighter: Susan Spencer-Wendel quit her job as a courts reporter for the Palm Beach Post in the summer of 2011 after being diagnosed with an incurable disease Adventures: Susan Spencer-Wendel (left) with friend Nancy Maass Kinnally awaiting the Northern Lights in Canada's Yukon Territory Spencer-Wendell's book, 'Until I Say Goodbye,' will hit store shelves on Tuesday, March 12 'Life is full of chapters,' she said. Now her speech is garbled and she can no longer walk or swallow a pill on her own, but she was determined her last words would not be sad.  I did not want to write a maudlin book,' she said 'I wanted people to laugh.' In what she knows are her final days she fills the time with her husband, her children, and a renewed sense of joy that comes with the swell of interest in her book. I now choke at most every meal, episodes which leave people around me screaming "Should we call 911?" Ergo, I don't eat much anymore.' She believes she just celebrated her last holiday season. 'I knew it would be this way,' she said. So for Thanksgiving we had our major holiday event. Our entire families - 40 in all - came. Was wonderful. Hectic, but wonderful. For Christmas, she asked for a ring that could be passed as an heirloom to her daughter, Marina, 15, or the future fiancees of one of her two sons one day. Explorer: Susan Spencer-Wendel and her husband, John, at The Richard Nixon suite at Hotel Gellert in Budapest on one of her life-affirming adventures Young love: A picture of the couple on their first trip to Hungary in 1993, soon after they got married Wedding day: John and Susan, married in 1992, have a 15-year-old daughter - and Susan insisted on picking out her wedding dress from a New York bridal store 'Mine is a story of twinning good and bad fortunes, which I find profound meaning in,' she wrote. 'I read every day a passage about joy and sorrow from Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet." It is about how "the deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." Is not the cup which holds your wine the very cup burned in the potter's oven? 'I believe this,' she added. 'That in the long trajectory of my family's lives, a deep sorrow now will open worlds of feeling for them in the future. This comforts me, brings me great peace. And the ability to delight in today and today alone. Wilderness: Ms Spencer-Wendel wrapped up against the cold on her trip to the Yukon Spencer-Wendel wrote her life story on an iPhone using only her right thumb, as all her other fingers have stopped functioning 'I am not gone,' she writes. I have today. I have more to give. I know the end is coming but do not despair. And she is happy with the life she chose to live. 'I listen often to one of my favorite rock songs, guitarist Eric Johnson's 'Cliffs of Dover,'" she recalled by email. And I think 'Thank God I was not a guitarist!' I watch ballet and think 'Thank God I wasn't a dancer.