The Complete Cancer Survival Guide: The Newest, Most Comprehensive, Cutting-Edge Source for All the Latest Information on Each of the 25 Most Common Forms of Cancer - Softcover

Teeley, Peter; Bashe, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385486057 ISBN 13: 9780385486057

Publisher: Main Street Books, 2000

Synopsis

Diagnosis * Staging * Treatment Options * Procedures and Medications * Clinical Trials

When you are fighting for your life, you must be sure to know your enemy and have at your disposal the most effective weapons there are. Peter Teeley and Philip Bashe provide a complete arsenal of absolutely essential information for anyone diagnosed with cancer.

Drawing on the advice and information provided by dozens of top specialists at all the major cancer centers in the United States, The Complete Cancer Survival Guide provides the most up-to-date, cutting-edge information available on how each of the 25 most common forms of cancer is diagnosed and staged, what the most advanced treatments are, and where to go throughout the country to be sure that the care you receive is absolutely the best there is.


In down-to-earth language, THE COMPLETE CANCER SURVIVAL GUIDE maps out a practical game plan for obtaining the best care available. Drawing on advice provided by dozens of top specialists at all of the major cancer centers around the United States, the authors provide the most up-to-date information on which to base decisions about where to seek treatment and to make sense of the many therapy choices that may seem at odds with one another.

THE COMPLETE CANCER SURVIVAL GUIDE is a bible on which to rely not only for learning about how to navigate the health-care maze and obtain the best care, but also for learning how to best care for yourself--physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. -->

About this title

About the Author

Peter Teeley, who served as press secretary to Vice President George Bush, was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 1991, and attributes his recovery to the fact that he gained access to a state-of-the-art clinical trial at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center. He now lives in Washington, D.C.

Philip Bashe is the author of many books, including You Don't Have to Die: One Family's Guide to Surviving Childhood Cancer and Cancer Free: The Comprehensive Prevention Program. He lives in Baldwin, Long Island.

From the Inside Flap

Staging * Treatment Options * Procedures and Medications * Clinical Trials

When you are fighting for your life, you must be sure to know your enemy and have at your disposal the most effective weapons there are. Peter Teeley and Philip Bashe provide a complete arsenal of absolutely essential information for anyone diagnosed with cancer.

Drawing on the advice and information provided by dozens of top specialists at all the major cancer centers in the United States, The Complete Cancer Survival Guide provides the most up-to-date, cutting-edge information available on how each of the 25 most common forms of cancer is diagnosed and staged, what the most advanced treatments are, and where to go throughout the country to be sure that the care you receive is absolutely the best there is.


In down-to-earth language, THE COMPLETE CANCER SURVIVAL GUIDE maps out a practical game plan for obtaining the best care available. Drawing on advice provided by doz

Reviews

Teeley, a cancer survivor, offers an indispensable guide for patients and health-care professionals. Because of his friendship with then Vice-President George Bush, for whom he worked as press secretary, Teeley learned about an experimental trial at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center. Teeley stresses that even without a connection, armed with research and the resources to ask questions, every cancer patient should be able to get the best available treatment. While he and Bashe (Cancer Free, etc.) cover everything from descriptions of different types of cancer to diagnosis terminology and treatment options, their material is clearly organized and eminently readable. There are many useful sidebars, including information on "medical terms you're likely to hear" and "examples of eligibility criteria for clinical trials." There are also lists of leading cancer centers around the country and suggested questions patients should ask their doctors. The book contains so much valuable information that physicians can use it with many patients, and most families would do well to set a copy on their bookshelf, alongside their Dr. Spock. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A fine, encyclopedic reference to a vast general area, this guide is made infinitely more valuable by providing sound specifics for individual cases. Teeley (press secretary under the Bush administration) and Bashe (You Dont Have to Die: One Familys Guide to Surviving Childhood Cancer, not reviewed) begin by describing Teeleys successful 1991 treatment for Stage III colon cancer. They acknowledge that even as the specifics are being written out here, they are going out of datetherefore, besides laying out what is known about the 25 most common cancers and their treatment, the authors emphasize where to go next to be sure that diagnosis and treatment are state-of-the-art. Teeley and Bashe first describe what cancer is, in detail, with charts describing what is known about the etiology of each of the 25 variants (the five most common are prostate, breast, lung, colorectal, and lymphomas). They then examine at length diagnosis and staging (how far the disease has progressed helps determine treatment) and try to put survival rates into some kind of individual perspective. The various treatment types are exhaustively detailed, both in general and then for the disease type. Emotional health is addressed, and exhaustive resource and reference lists are included. Teeley and Bashe push for an aggressive, expert attack (this is no time to be in a community hospital, no matter how early the disease is caught), and recommend considering experimental treatments. First rate help, clearly organizeda way out of the confusion and fear that accompanies a cancer diagnosis. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Teeley has recovered from colon cancer and with medical writer Bashe offers informative, easy-to-read guidance--in effect, a new edition of the American Cancer Society's Informed Decisions (1997)--to the cancer family of diseases. Teeley and Bashe present their information and counsel in chapters concerned with signs, symptoms, and causes; diagnosis and staging; therapeutics; second opinions and finding treatment; treatment options; treatment expectations; symptom, side effect, and complications management; emotional health; getting timely help; and ending treatment. Specifics relative to the 25 most common types of cancer are outlined within the chapters, as appropriate. Tables help focus the vast amount of information; cross-references direct readers to related material; and questions for patients and caregivers to ask in order to keep physicians, nurses, and others on track and avoid neglect that could cause later problems figure saliently in the book's advice. Putting a human face on the disease with Teeley's and others' experiences, Teeley and Bashe also discuss the difficulties brought on by referring to the "courageous battle" against cancer. William Beatty

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Cancer: A Thief in the Night

Cancer is a disease that takes years to develop, yet it can plunge you and your family into upheaval the instant it takes the doctor to deliver the news no one wants to hear: "What we've found is a malignancy."

At the time my cancer was discovered in 1991, I'd never been seriously ill in my life. By then I was six years removed from daily politics, busy running my own consulting firm in Washington. I'd entered government life back in 1970 as press secretary to the assistant U.S. Senate minority leader, Robert Griffin of Michigan, my home state. I went on to serve in the same capacity for Jacob Javits, helping to reelect him to his fourth and final term as senior U.S. senator from New York.

In 1976, I took a leave of absence from Senator Javits's office to handle press duties for President Gerald Ford's campaign committee. Coming on the heels of the Watergate scandal, the election was a debacle for the Republicans. Jimmy Carter edged out Ford for the White House, and the Democrats gained seats in both the House and the Senate. Not long afterward, I became communications director and chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee as the party set about rebuilding itself.

I'd been hooked by the excitement of a presidential race, though, and had the urge to do it again. To help shape a winning campaign and be part of moving the country in a direction you believe will benefit the American people is a dream that too few ever experience, especially someone like me--an immigrant who as a boy came to the United States from England on a battered troop-carrier ship following World War II.

George Bush, the former congressman from Texas, United Nations ambassador, and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was gearing up for a presidential run in 1980. He was widely respected, but certainly considered a dark-horse candidate. Although I didn't know him well on a personal level, I'd admired him as a public official. So I was delighted to become his press secretary in 1979. The association was to last into his second term as vice president under Ronald Reagan.

In 1985, I decided to leave politics and launch my own business. As happens to many public servants, I was worn out from the eighteen-hour days and constant travel. It wasn't unusual for a foreign trip with the vice president to log twenty-five or thirty thousand miles over the course of three weeks as we leapfrogged from Alaska to Japan to Korea to Singapore to Australia to New Zealand to China to Hawaii before finally returning home. And the fall political campaigns frequently resembled a cross-country derby. We used to wring a few extra hours out of the day by opening with an early-morning campaign stop on the East Coast. Then we'd work our way west through the time zones, with stops in, say, Chicago, Kansas City, and Denver, before winding up in Los Angeles by nightfall.

Another reason for my departing the White House: I was newly married. While I was press secretary, I had hired Valerie Hodgson, a twenty-seven-year-old photographer for United Press International, to be the vice president's official photographer. The year was 1983.

The two of us nearly ended up being the proverbial ships that pass in the night. Valerie's first day on the job coincided with my leaving for a fellowship at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Then she left the White House to pursue a freelance career shortly before I came back to Washington. But during my sabbatical, I had accompanied the vice president on a trip to California. Valerie and I struck up a conversation aboard Air Force Two, went out for a late dinner that night in San Diego, and started dating. We were married on November 18, 1984, two weeks after the Reagan-Bush ticket's landslide victory for a second term.

Our daughter Randall was born in 1987, and Adrienne arrived three years later, on my fiftieth birthday. My two daughters from my first marriage were already in their twenties: Susan, a speech pathologist in Livonia, Michigan, and Laura, a communications major at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

In all, it was a happy time. I had a wonderful family, and a thriving business that allowed me to enjoy them. Then everything was abruptly put on hold.

The ordeal began innocently enough: I had a dull pain in my right side. Valerie and the kids had been suffering from the stomach flu since Labor Day, so I figured I'd picked up what they had and didn't pay much attention to it. But after it persisted for a few days, I went to our family doctor for an examination. She poked around a bit, told me not to worry, and sent me home. When the pain didn't subside, I saw her partner, with the same result.

Several days passed, and still I kept complaining--with little sympathy from Valerie, I might add. "Look," she said one night, "if you think there's something wrong, why don't you go down to the emergency room and have an X ray taken?" Which I did. My doctor read the films the next day and assured me she saw nothing unusual.

"But there's obviously something bothering you," she continued. "So I'm going to schedule you for an MRI scan tomorrow afternoon." No sooner did I return home from the imaging procedure than the phone rang. It was my doctor. "I want you to get over to the hospital," she said urgently, naming a nearby community hospital. "You've got an inflamed appendix, and you need to have it taken out now.

"I've checked you in. A surgeon will meet you there and remove it right away. I'll see you in the recovery room."

I tossed some clothes into an overnight bag, called a taxi, and went off to have an appendectomy, or so I thought.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in a darkened hospital room. Though still drowsy from the anesthesia, I knew it was late at night, perhaps 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Three hospital attendants were hoisting me into a bed. I hurt badly all over and sensed something was seriously wrong. But I was too exhausted to pursue the thought. I just wanted to sleep.

At about 7:30 in the morning, the bedside phone rang, jarring me partially awake.

"Teeley! How ya feeling?"

It was George Bush calling.

"I really feel bad, I'm sorry, I can't talk now," I mumbled, and dropped the receiver back into the cradle.

Christ, I thought to myself, I just hung up on the president of the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Main Street Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385486057
• ISBN 13: 9780385486057
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 992