Garden City, N.Y.- Lauren Terrazzano, a Newsday reporter who chronicled her three-year bout with lung cancer, has died. She was 39.

Terrazzano died Tuesday night at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Newsday staffers learned of her death Wednesday in a letter from editor John Mancini.

“She was well-loved by her many friends and colleagues in the newsroom and a formidable presence in the lives of the people in the communities she covered,” Mancini said.

Described by colleagues as a tenacious, hard-nosed street reporter, Terrazzano covered a variety of beats, most recently as a child welfare/social services reporter. She began writing the column, “Life, With Cancer,” in October 2006.

She wrote about the inappropriate things people say to cancer patients because they don’t know what else to say, and about breaking the myth that people with cancer are heroes “when really we’re just like everyone else.”

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