Download or read book The Harrowing Medical Journey of a Cancer Survivor written by Nina Kramer and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2012-12-29 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Harrowing Medical Journey of a Cancer Survivor is the story of one womans courageous and, at times page-turning, story coping with a severe illness that lasted more than a decade. It began with a diagnosis of low-grade bladder cancer and ended with the removal and/or reconstruction of vital organs. Although the story is specific to bladder cancer and its aftermath, it covers aspects inherent in any serious, and sometimes life-threatening, illness. Typical emotions experienced during such a frightening illness are discussed: anger, hope, depression, fear, anxiety, and, yes, even pleasure and satisfaction. Successful (and not so successful) ways of coping with these difficult emotions are also discussed, covering such aspects as cancer groups and psychotherapy, the support of family and close friends, and assertiveness with bossy medical personnel. There are over seventy-three thousand cases of bladder cancer a year in the United States. In some cases, simple surgery to remove the tumors will be the only treatment. In other cases, the bladder may be removed and a new one reconstructed from a section of large intestine. In still other cases, as in the authors, the bladder cancer can metastasize, or spread, to other organs. About 5 percent of people in the United States with bladder cancer will die from it. The good news is that less people are dying from it each year. Although The Harrowing Medical Journey of a Cancer Survivor is a story about the treatment and, finally, cure or bladder cancer, it should be helpful to anyone living through a difficult, possibly life-threatening, illness. Topics are covered that apply to anyone going through such an illnesstopics such as undergoing major surgery; choosing the great (as well as the inadequate) doctors and surgeons; finances; staying fit; nutrition; the anxious wait for reports (like CT scans and biopsies); chemotherapy; the dread of inevitable treatments, like dialysis; and transplants. In addition, and because the author is a novelist, this story is often gripping and non-put-downable.

Download or read book My Two Journeys in Cancer World written by Mike Metzler and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February of 2009 the author heard five of the most terrifying words in the English language, "Mr. Metzler, you have cancer." Mike was given a 50/50 chance of surviving for five years, even with being treated with chemotherapy and radiation. That diagnosis started what would become two journeys in Cancer World, a physical and psychological place unwillingly inhabited by cancer patients, their caregivers, families, and friends. The first journey was that of a patient being successfully treated for Stage 4 head and neck cancer for nine months. That journey included numerous medical appointments and scans, many visits to the Emergency Room, and one 4-day stay in the hospital after nearly dying from a reaction to his chemotherapy. His second and much longer journey has been that of a 10-year survivor who has coped with many debilitating and permanent side effects from chemotherapy and radiation treatments. It has left his body, his "Brokedown Palace," with numerous surgical scars, poorly functioning muscles, a speech disability, and a very limited choice of foods that can be eaten and swallowed safely. That last condition has led to him needing a feeding tube for the rest of his life. Most of his story is told in real time, as written in the blog he started when treatments began in 2009 and maintained for the next nine years. Other parts of the story are told through his reflections on the many ups and downs he experienced along the way. Team Mike was the large group of family members, friends, medical professionals, fellow members of the Cancer Survivors' Network community, and even a pet cat who helped Mike through his most difficult times over the years. Its captain was his wife, Terry, who contributes a key chapter from the perspective of his primary caregiver-a viewpoint rarely expressed in the many books written about cancer today. Mike's tells his story with great emotion, clarity, sometimes uncomfortable honesty, and an unfailing sense of humor. In the end, it's a story of perseverance, survival, and optimism-even when there was little to be optimistic about so many times on his journeys. Mike chooses not to dwell on the many things that cancer and its treatments have taken from his life. Rather, he is grateful for the many good things he still has in his life, and the many good things yet to come in the future.

Download or read book Survivor written by Laura Landro and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2000-08-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly after her thirty-seventh birthday, Wall Street Journal reporter and editor Laura Landro was told that she had chronic myelogenous leukemia. Survivor is the remarkable account of her battle against this devastating, potentially fatal cancer -- and her successful struggle to take control of her own case. At first almost paralyzed with fear when diagnosed with this form of blood cancer, Landro resolved to use her journalistic training to seek out the treatment that would give her the best shot at surviving. Noting that most Americans spend more time researching what kind of car to buy than they do their health care, she shows how and why all patients can -- and must -- arm themselves with the facts, learn to understand medical jargon, get doctors to answer all their questions in layman's terms, weigh conflicting medical opinions, and make the difficult choice among the options open to them. Landro's inspiring story offers all readers hope and the know-how to navigate the terrifying and bewildering world of medicine, even when they are very ill and at their most vulnerable.

Download or read book The Cancer Journals written by Audre Lorde and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy. A Penguin Classic First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde's testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.

Download or read book The Undying written by Anne Boyer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." —Sally Rooney, author of Normal People "Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." —Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations

Download or read book The Emperor of All Maladies written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Download or read book Survival Symphony written by Louis Cesarini and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of my 1st year battle with stage 4 lung cancer.

Download or read book Between Two Kingdoms written by Suleika Jaouad and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

Download or read book The First Cell written by Azra Raza and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the fascinating scholarship of The Emperor of All Maladies and the deeply personal experience of When Breath Becomes Air, a world-class oncologist examines the current state of cancer and its devastating impact on the individuals it affects -- including herself. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

Download or read book Cancer from Both Sides Now a Journey of Faith written by Marcia L. Kiser and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a spiritual and clinical guide from a faith perspective. It is designed to encourage anyone enduring cancer treatments and its debilitating side effectsor anyone with a terminal illnessto always maintain their faith in Gods healing powers and know that there is always faith, hope, and love if we simply are patient, look upward, and seek Gods divine guidance. Mrs. Kiser describes her rollercoaster ride as she experiences her cancer and radiation therapy. Although she has her world torn inside out and upside down by fear and doubt, she witnesses the healing power and strength that comes from slowing down in life, taking one day at a time, and listening to God as He speaks to us in many different ways to help us cope with our illness and find a road to recovery through a journey of faith. Mrs. Kisers background in psychology, counseling, and courses in death and dying can inspire anyone to face the stages of dying as a normal human process and still find courage and victory in living each day to the fullest. Mrs. Kiser is more than qualified to offer this guidance because she is not only an oncology nurse with many years of experience, but she is also a cancer patient herself who shares her own life experiences in the hope of inspiring others to a better and fuller quality of lifedespite the odds.

Download or read book Journaling Cancer in Words and Images written by Harriet Wadeson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dealing with serious illness and the threat of death is a part of the human experience, and more than other prevalent illnesses, cancer conjures up fears of suffering, helpless debilitation, and death. This text is a vivid memoir of the author's own cancer diagnosis and treatment. Harriet Wadeson, a pioneer in the art therapy profession and author of seven other books on art therapy, here shows us her own response to the challenge of cancer. In addition to the written journal, she created an 'altered book' of over 70 images throughout her cancer treatment. They are described in the text and reproduced in full color on an accompanying CD-ROM."--From back cover.

Download or read book Patient Number One written by Rick Murdock and published by Crown. This book was released on 2000 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Great Dames, Marie Benner introduces us to a pantheon of women whose lives are both gloriously individual and yet somehow universal. Her subjects range from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who found happiness in her last decade, to Constance Baker Motley, who argued Brown versus the Board of Education before the United States Supreme Court, to Luise Rainer, who won two Academy Awards by age thirty, then fled Hollywood for good. We meet Kitty Carlisle Hart, a professional charmer and tireless advocate of the arts, and Diana Trilling, the intellectual's intellectual, who published her final, splendid memoir at age ninety-one. There are even the Becky Sharps, who maneuvered powerful men to help them ascend: Marietta Tree, Pamela Harriman, and Clare Boothe Luce. And the wonderfully flamboyant Kay Thompson, whose pint-sized creation, Eloise, gave her a place in American cultural history. Finally, there is Thelma Brenner, who was the first great dame her daughter ever knew." "These are women who helped shape a century. Marie Brenner's portraits are intimate, vivid, and true, and full of subtle but important lessons. The way the great dames lived their lives - their rules, their codes, their insistence on certain fundamentals - are models that today's women should consider as they ascend to positions of leadership in a new millennium."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Breast Cancer Journal written by Juliet Wittman and published by . This book was released on 1994-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named as a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award in Nonfiction, this exceptional book is now available in paperback. Wittman's diagnosis, treatment, and recovery is not about breast cancer as cold statistics or medically prescribed regimens; it's about a woman's life. Ties-in to National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October).

Download or read book The Focused Fight written by Terri Tomoff and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terri Tomoff shares her informative and transformative memoir regarding her son's distinction of being a 5X cancer survivor from childhood through adult cancers. Her unique story-telling skills chronicles the universal account of his (and her family's) struggles from the day of diagnosis in 1996, to her son's survivorship and where they all stand proudly today. She weaves her story with facts, humor, and hope and gratitude. She then articulates the power of community and the unwavering support she and her family received from the doctors to the dog walkers. Her readers will appreciate her "Chats from the Other Side of the Bed," along with over 50 powerful reflections that illustrate that it does indeed take a village.

Download or read book In Between Days written by Teva Harrison and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2016-04-23 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2016 Governor General's Literary Award Finalist 2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Winner 2017 Joe Shuster Award Nominee Teva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 37. In this brilliant and inspiring graphic memoir, she documents through comic illustration and short personal essays what it means to live with the disease. She confronts with heartbreaking honesty the crises of identity that cancer brings: a lifelong vegetarian, Teva agrees to use experimental drugs that have been tested on animals. She struggles to reconcile her long-term goals with an uncertain future, balancing the innate sadness of cancer with everyday acts of hope and wonder. She also examines those quiet moments of helplessness and loving with her husband, her family, and her friends, while they all adjust to the new normal. Ultimately, In-Between Days is redemptive and uplifting, reminding each one of us of how beautiful life is, and what a gift.

Download or read book Cancer A Love Story written by Lauren Segal and published by Jaico Publishing House. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memoir of a four-time cancer survivor LAUREN SEGAL Cancer: A Love Story is the intimately searing memoir of a four-time cancer survivor. The book breathlessly tracks author Lauren Segal’s journey to come to terms with the untold challenges of facing the dreaded disease. Forced to face her needle phobia, the author leads the reader into her crumbling world as she confronts the terrors of treatment—from debilitating chemo to nuking radiation. Death is her uninvited companion. But in the midst of her lonely horror, in a quest for deeper meaning, Lauren discovers the unexpected gift of awareness of unanticipated opportunities that cancer presents—to confront her unmasked humanity—her fears, strengths and weaknesses. “I have come to understand that in the same way that the majestic lotus flower has its roots in murky waters, so too does the emergence of beauty in life sometimes depend on life’s darker events.” Lauren Segal currently works as a museum curator; her most recent project is curating and designing the new Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. She heads up Trace, a research, design and exhibition company. Inspired by her own journey into self-discovery and healing, Lauren is currently studying part-time to become a psychoanalyst. “What a privilege to read this immensely inspirational and brave story. Lauren’s personality and energy leaps off the page – the mark of a natural and gifted writer.” —David Cohen, campaigns editor and chief feature writer, London Evening Standard

Download or read book An Elegant Defense written by Matt Richtel and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller "Gives you all the context you need to understand the science of immunity. ... An Elegant Defense left me with [a] sense of awe.” —Bill Gates, Gates Notes Summer Reading List The Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist "explicates for the lay reader the intricate biology of our immune system" (Jerome Groopman, MD, New York Review of Books) From New York Times science journalist Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense is an acclaimed and definitive exploration of the immune system and the secrets of health. Interweaving cutting-edge science with the intimate stories of four individual patients, this epic, first-of-its-kind book “give[s] lay readers a means of understanding what’s known so far about the intricate biology of our immune systems” (The Week). The immune system is our body’s essential defense network, a guardian vigilantly fighting illness, healing wounds, maintaining order and balance, and keeping us alive. It has been honed by evolution over millennia to face an almost infinite array of threats. For all its astonishing complexity, however, the immune system can be easily compromised by fatigue, stress, toxins, advanced age, and poor nutrition—hallmarks of modern life—and even by excessive hygiene. Paradoxically, it is a fragile wonder weapon that can turn on our own bodies with startling results, leading today to epidemic levels of autoimmune disorders. An Elegant Defense effortlessly guides readers on a scientific detective tale winding from the Black Plague to twentieth-century breakthroughs in vaccination and antibiotics, to today’s laboratories that are revolutionizing immunology—perhaps the most extraordinary and consequential medical story of our time. Drawing on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists, Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”