How does Carla say she survived? Is this valid? Why or why not?

"There was no choice," she said, motioning almost unconsciously to the room where her children were playing. "My friends often asked me whether I felt as if my life was somehow made abnormal by my disease. I would tell them the same thing: for someone who is sick, this is their new normal." I do not find this valid, because many others who saw no option but to live died unwillingly. Carla was simply fortunate or was given the correct drugs to cure her cancer.