STRIPPED: Cancer, Culture, and the Cloud of Unknowing - Softcover

King, Heather

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1494964643 ISBN 13: 9781494964641

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

I'm a lawyer turned writer, a Catholic convert, and a sober alcoholic. In 2000, I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The good news: a small tumor; the least advanced stage. Still, doctors recommended surgery, radiation, high-dose chemo, and five years of the aggressive hormone drug Tamoxifen.

Terrified of dying, yet determined to steer my own course, I began researching. I found that chemo could kill, radiation could cause secondary cancers, Tamoxifen had severe side effects, and long-term studies on any of those treatments was virtually nil.

STRIPPED is a memoir about coming to the decision to have the tumor surgically removed--and to forego all further treatment. To love this world with all my heart, even as I know I'll be leaving it one day, is to dwell at the intersection of a cross where mystery, paradox, and a sense of humor meet.

Which is maybe why the very best thing to come out of that dark-night-of-the-soul year was the phone call I made to my friend Brad the night I got the diagnosis. "Brad!" I keened. "I have it! I have cancer!"

"That sucks," he replied. "Could it have been that time I smoked in your car?"

About this title

About the Author

Heather King is a writer, retreat-giver, and nationwide speaker with several memoirs, among them Parched; Redeemed; Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and Poor Baby. She lives in Los Angeles, appears monthly in Magnificat, and blogs at Heather King: Mystery, Smarts, Laughs (heather-king.com)

Review

“Heather King’s memoir of her journey with breast cancer is astonishing. It is painful, funny, compassionate, and unforgettable. Her honesty strips away all pretense and invites us into her mind and heart so that page by page we feel what she feels and understand what she comes to understand, that the potential for healing lies within ourselves. ‘The real tragedy,’ she writes, ‘is to die with our truest song unsung – to die without recognizing that our suffering has meaning.’ Stripped has profound spiritual meaning for anyone who reads it. It is amazing.”
– Michael Leach, author of Why Stay Catholic? Unexpected Answers to a Life-Changing Question

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1494964643
• ISBN 13: 9781494964641
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 218