NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Falling during a touch football game in 1999 marked the opening chapter in Lisa Moore's 8-year struggle with breast cancer, which will soon end as so many other such battles do -- with loss.

While more than 225,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with some form of breast cancer each year and 46,000 die from the disease, Lisa's case has been unique.

Lisa is a character in a 35-year-old comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" and her struggle with the disease has been watched daily by readers of over 400 newspapers around the world.

This summer, following a second bout of cancer, Lisa decided to stop treatments and earlier this month, she and her husband, Les, installed a hospital bed in their home and called a hospice for help with the final stages of her disease.

In early October, she will die.

Cartoonist Tom Batiuk said he decided to bring back Lisa's cancer after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. He had a successful operation in January and is now in the clear.

"When I got my news, I realized I had only scratched the surface and wanted to touch some real emotions," Batiuk, 60, said in an interview from his Ohio home.

Batiuk has been drawing Funky and his gaggle of friends since 1972, when they were in high school. While much of the strip has been funny, he has also dealt with topics including teen pregnancy and suicide, dyslexia and dating abuse.

But his decision to give one of his central characters breast cancer was seen by many as a dangerous decision.

"When I first started the (Lisa) series I got a lot of e-mails and letters about it," he said. "A lot of them started off with a definition of what a comic strip should and should not be."

PREPARING FOR THE WORST

When Lisa's cancer return, he got fewer letters.

"With the recurrence, I get the sense that I have gained a little more trust," he said.

Cancer advocates praise Batiuk's handling of the disease.

"Twenty years ago, your grandmother wouldn't even say the words 'breast health' or 'breast cancer' and now we're saying that it's there and we can discuss it," said Jeanne Rizzo, head of The Breast Cancer Fund which raises money for research.

Aside from people's reluctance to discuss cancer, there were other reasons Batiuk's decision was potentially perilous.

Since the strip started, Lisa and Les have been central characters, initially part of uncool crowd in high school but favorites with readers. They married in 1996.

Lisa grew up to be a successful advocate lawyer and Les returned to their old high school as an English teacher.

Batiuk first introduced Lisa's cancer to the strip in January 1999. Lisa and Les were playing in a touch football game in the snow when she hit the ground, feeling a lump in her breast which she confirmed by a breast self-examination in a controversial strip and was later diagnosed in a mammogram.

As the strip progressed, Lisa chose to have a mastectomy, went through a course of chemotherapy and then was thought to be cancer-free.

Between then and 2006 the disease was referenced occasionally but Lisa seemed in good health. Then, last year, a random blood test showed that her cancer was back. It is not uncommon for breast cancer to return years after treatment.

"Most women who get breast cancer are just waiting for the other shoe to drop," Rizzo said. "I don't think this has been grotesque or manipulative at all. It's very real."

Loyal readers are bracing themselves for the end.

"We have a lot of death and dying around us all the time," Rizzo said. "But with this character, there's a real sadness ... a sense of 'Oh God, she's just not going to make it.'"

So where does Batiuk and the rest of the Winkerbean crew go from here? Following the conclusion of the Lisa story, the characters are set to jump ahead and age 10 years.

"I didn't want to spend a couple years of Les mourning, said Batiuk, who is now writing strips to appear in late 2008. "I wanted to show the lives of the characters have gone on."

But Lisa's story doesn't totally end here though.

The University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland is to memorialize the series with the launch of "Lisa's Legacy Fund" to raise money for cancer research and education.