Breast Cancer: The Facts You Need to Know about Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond (Your Personal Health) - Softcover

Kelly, Pat; Levine, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1552977382 ISBN 13: 9781552977385

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2003

Synopsis

One in eight American women will learn that she has breast cancer. While survival rates are improving, the diagnosis still wreaks havoc on their lives and families. A complex illness, breast cancer affects all aspects of a woman's life: her physical health and future wellbeing, her primary relationships, her children, her self-esteem, her sexuality.

This informative book serves to enlighten and empower women who have breast cancer, while providing valuable information and insight for those who love them. The book's topics include:

Finding out you have breast cancer
How to get help and find information
Working with your doctor
The emotional aspects of the disease
Treatment options: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation
Physical side effects of treatment
Nurturing yourself and your relationships
Follow-up care
What to expect after treatment ends
Recurrence

Written with honesty and compassion, this book offers women and those who love them a blueprint for taking a proactive part in their treatment and healing.

About this title

About the Author

Pat Kelly is president of PISCES - Partnering in Self-help Community Education and Support - established in 1994 to provide training, education and consulting services to self-help groups. She is the founder of the Ontario Breast Cancer Support and Resource Centre (Willow), which set the standard in providing support and resources to women with breast cancer. Kelly has been a keynote speaker at many conferences throughout North America and is a frequent guest on radio and television programs.

Mark Levine, MD, MSC, FRCP(C), is a medical oncologist at the Hamilton Regional Cancer Centre. He is both a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University. Levine holds the Buffett Taylor Chair in Breast Cancer Research at McMaster University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

This book is for the thousands of women who have been told, "I'm sorry, but you have breast cancer." It is also for the husbands, lovers, partners, friends, daughters, mothers, colleagues, co-workers, and family members who are trying to help and understand. This book has been written by experts in the field -- other women living with breast cancer, women who know the journey from "the inside out" -- and the health care team that supports us.

The idea for this book began in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, in 1988. I had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 at the age of thirty-four and later met Barb Sullivan, who had been diagnosed a year earlier, aged forty-three. Each of us was looking for support, information, and encouragement at a time when Canada had no groups, information about treatments was very hard to find, and women didn't talk about cancer because they feared how others might react. Fortunately Barb and I found each other, and we soon realized there were probably other women like us looking for help, so we decided to hold a meeting. In April 1988, we first met at the local YMCA where thirty-five other women from our community joined us. Very quickly the membership grew as other women came to share stories, to give support and information, to cry and to laugh, to mourn together for those who died -- and, most importantly to learn to live with cancer, The group that started at the Y continues to meet every month, providing support, information, and advocacy for women and their families affected by breast cancer.

Much has happened since that first meeting. Women now talk openly about having cancer, information is easier to find, and survivors and advocates have made significant gains in the decision making about all aspects of the disease. All across Canada -- from Fredericton to Thunder Bay to Regina to Whitehorse -- small groups have start with three or four women gathered at kitchen tables, in church basements, or in the waiting rooms of doctors' offices and clinics. More women are taking an active part in their diagnosis, treatment and healing. Many groups and individuals are organizing advocacy efforts in order to bring about systemic changes in health care at local, regional, and national levels.

While breast cancer continues to occur at alarmingly high rate there is important good news. The death rate is finally starting to moderately, in Canada and the United States, particularly in young premenopausal women. Clinical practice guidelines, outlining the way to treat the disease, have now been developed as one way to ensure all women and their doctors understand the range of options. Surgery, radiation, hormones, and chemotherapy are still standard treatments, but newer and more effective forms of some therapies are making a difference in survival rates. There is evidence that support groups, complementary therapies, and mind-body techniques, which encourage wellness, play an important role in the care and quality of life of women with breast cancer.

And there has been another very personal and quite dramatic changes over the past fourteen years. Mark Levine and I started our relationship as doctor and patient -- and in the beginning we had very different views about the world of breast cancer. Advocacy was not something taught at medical school. We spent a lot of time trying to convince each other that we were right. And, eventually, we were both right.

Over the years we have come to value our differences of opinion and to seek one another out -- each experts in our own knowledge. We have developed a relationship based upon trust, experience, and friendship.

Today, advocacy is now valued as an integral part of the comprehensive breast cancer team. As Dr. Larry Norton, a respected colleague once said, "It is an expression of our unity of purpose as humans dedicated to the eradication of human suffering. It is the realization that we are all in this together."

We hope our book reflects the heightened awareness about breast cancer and the needs of women now being diagnosed with it. Our intent is that this knowledge will serve to enlighten you -- intellectually and spiritually -- with honesty and compassion.

In hope and good health,
Pat Kelly and Mark Levine
October 2002

Edition details

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1552977382
• ISBN 13: 9781552977385
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160