Tales from Cancerland


Book Description

"Ileana von Hirsch writes with a light touch and a warm heart. Her bravery and zest for life shine from every page of this book. Her woes and joys will make you cry, laugh - and think." Edward Lucas Tales from Cancerland follows on from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo and continues the author's adventures as she gets used to life with cancer. In turn absurd, hilarious, irreverent, but always candid, as she writes, "If I have made Cancerland sound as if it is sometimes fun, that is because it can be, and more often than one might think." Implausible as this sounds, if you or someone you care about are stuck in Cancerland, this cheery collection of tales, which meanders in a leisurely way around plot flaws in King Lear, escaping from hospitals, scoring your favourite drugs, what to do if told to pee into a sock, getting your children to empty the dishwasher, curing insomnia and dealing with well-meant but baffling gifts, is a high-spirited, informative and helpful guide to the country, its inhabitants and its customs.




Fine, Thanks


Book Description

Diagnosed with extensive cancer just months after a clear mammogram, Mary Dunnewold navigates the treatment gauntlet and social dilemmas that follow with humor and insight.




Greetings from Cancerland


Book Description

Shortly after Alysa Cummings was diagnosed with breast cancer, she sat down at her laptop computer and began keeping a journal. Over the two years of her cancer treatment, Alysa continued writing as she moved through the healthcare delivery system: I fantasized that I could somehow use my computer to craft a story with an upbeat next chapter or fairy tale happily-ever-after ending. Looking back, thats the only explanation I can come up with, why I felt so compelled to create a record of my day-to-day experiences as a cancer patient. The one thing I could control were these words that crowded each other as they quickly appeared on my computer screen; these stories that flowed through my fingertips in such a manic rush; these traumatic adventures that happened to me in a place I began to call CancerLand. CancerLand: its this parallel universe, I swear, separate and apart from the rest of life as I once knew it. How did I end up in this wacky Bizarro World filled with freaky language and even stranger rituals? Gradually her daily journal entries became vignettes and poems that were published on the OncoLink website. Greetings from CancerLand, a collection of Alysas writing from 2002-2012, charts one breast cancer survivors journey as she discovers the power of writing to move her recovery forward.




Agony and Absurdity: Adventures in Cancerland


Book Description

Living with breast cancer can be absurd. Often, though, the absurdities are kept behind the curtain and shared only with other women living in Cancerland-the tactless comment from a co-worker about how attractive we used to be when we still had hair, breast implants that explode or prostheses that are left behind, accidentally, in the vacation house, and a new wig that makes a woman feel more like Tina Turner than herself. You'll never hear more raucous laughter than that coming from a room full of women sharing their breast cancer experiences. And, in a hot second, that room can turn into a puddle full of tears, given the agony of cancer-saying goodbye to parts of ourselves that are taken in the name of treatment, or to our sisters who do not survive this disease. In bringing these stories forward, we share the painful, the profound, and the ridiculous. We heal, too. And, through these stories, we hope to increase the understanding of the young patient and survivor experience, and to illuminate the dark spaces for those who will walk this path in the future.




Agony and Absurdity


Book Description

"Living with breast cancer can be absurd. Often, though, the absurdities are kept behind the curtain and shared only with other women living in Cancerland--the tactless comment from a co-worker about how attractive we used to be when we still had hair, breast implants that explode or prostheses that are left behind, accidentally, in the vacation house, and a new wig that makes a woman feel more like Tina Turner than herself. You'll never hear more raucous laughter than that coming from a room full of women sharing their breast cancer experiences. And, in a hot second, that room can turn into a puddle full of tears, given the agony of cancer--saying goodbye to parts of ourselves that are taken in the name of treatment, or to our sisters who do not survive this disease. In bringing these stories forward, we share the painful, the profound, and the ridiculous. We heal, too. And, through these stories, we hope to increase the understanding of the young patient and survivor experience, and to illuminate the dark spaces for those who will walk this path in the future."--Page [4] of cover.




Cancerland


Book Description

An Amazon Best of the Month Book "For all the insight he offers into the hard science and thorny logistics of studying cancer, Dr. Scadden’s most moving passages consider the effect of the disease on the people who suffer from it and those who care for them." —The Wall Street Journal A doctor’s riveting story of loss and hope in the world of cancer. What is it like to encounter cancer? How does it feel to face the unknown, to enter a world of hope, loss, and dread? From the diagnosis of his childhood friend’s mother to his poignant memories in the lab, David Scadden’s seen the unknown world of cancer from the lens of a young boy, a classmate, a researcher, a friend, a doctor, and a neighbor. Scadden chronicles his personal memories of cancer – his visits to his sick neighbor and his classmate who left school and never came back. Now Dr. David Scadden, co-founder of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and one of the world's leading experts on immunology and oncology, writes his memoir, Cancerland, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio. With riveting stories and moving compassion, Scadden and D’Antonio paint a still rapidly changing landscape in the context of all too common stories of loss. Ranging from Scadden’s personal childhood memories to his triumphs and regrets as a doctor, Scadden illuminates a light at the end of a dark tunnel. Through opening a window into the science of medicine in the world of the unknown, Scadden and D’Antonio humanize cancer while inspiring action that we all so desperately need.




Journeys in Cancerland


Book Description

Journeys in Cancerland offers two object lessons in patient participation. For a long time, patients barely participated in their own care. Once diagnosed with a disease like cancer, they would enter an all-consuming acute care system that took over their lives until they went into remission or died. That this is no longer the case is due, for the most part, to patients and caregivers like John-Peter Bradford and Lisa Newman who have begun to take charge of their care. Their stories are not merely instructive about cancer -- they are lessons in how to live with life threatening illness and how to face death. John-Peter Bradford is CEO of Bradford Bachinski Limited and a member of the Cancer Care Advisory Committee of the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. Lisa Newman has over thirty years' experience in the Ontario healthcare system as a clinician, supervisor, and manager. Foreword by Sholom Glouberman, President of the Patients' Association of Canada




Cancerland


Book Description

Cancerland, a memoir about coming of age with cancer, tells the story of one girl's journey toward subjectivity by navigating gender identity and intimacy through illness. Growing up in Texas during the Regan era, raised by Yuppie parents who are conflicted by their own Midwestern working-class roots and recent past as hippies in San Francisco, she endures their painful divorce and must split her time between fending off the drunks in her father's bar in Dallas, and making her way as an outcast in her suburban high school's perpetual popularity contest. After the bar shuts down, her poverty-stricken father moves out of state, back to his Michigan hometown. It is at this point, when she is 17, that she is diagnosed with cancer, and her father doesn't return during her treatment. Legally, she is a child, but physically she appears to be a woman; she is frozen in time by her illness and its terrible treatment. A second narrative thread is woven throughout the text in which an older, wiser narrator speaks from the present about her challenging friendship with a transgendered person who opts to undergo male-to-female sex reassignment surgery that goes terribly wrong. The physical and emotional trauma that ensues parallels the childhood stories from the past that the narrator juxtaposes with the present. It's a story about gender and sexual identity formation, managing intimacy and achieving personhood through conflict and illness.




Tales from the Tail End


Book Description




A Breast Cancer Alphabet


Book Description

A definitive and approachable guide to life during, and after, breast cancer The biggest risk factor for breast cancer is simply being a woman. Madhulika Sikka's A Breast Cancer Alphabet offers a new way to live with and plan past the hardest diagnosis that most women will ever receive: a personal, practical, and deeply informative look at the road from diagnosis to treatment and beyond. What Madhulika Sikka didn't foresee when initially diagnosed, and what this book brings to life so vividly, are the unexpected and minute challenges that make navigating the world of breast cancer all the trickier. A Breast Cancer Alphabet is an inspired reaction to what started as a personal predicament. This A-Z guide to living with breast cancer goes where so many fear to tread: sex (S is for Sex - really?), sentimentality (J is for Journey - it's a cliché we need to dispense with), hair (H is for Hair - yes, you can make a federal case of it) and work (Q is for Quitting - there'll be days when you feel like it). She draws an easy-to-follow, and quite memorable, map of her travels from breast cancer neophyte to seasoned veteran. As a prominent news executive, Madhulika had access to the most cutting edge data on the disease's reach and impact. At the same time, she craved the community of frank talk and personal insight that we rely on in life's toughest moments. This wonderfully inventive book navigates the world of science and story, bringing readers into Madhulika's mind and experience in a way that demystifies breast cancer and offers new hope for those living with it.