Cancer is Like the Wind. This item is unavailable.Cancer is Like the Wind

Cancer is Like the Wind is one of the first — if not the first — books that portrays in a clear, honest, and realistic way, through the eyes of a practicing oncologist, the medical and emotional struggles that confront patients and their families and friends attempting to cope with cancer. The author’s sharing of patients’ histories interwoven with discussions of nature, literature, and philosophy will firmly strike a chord with anyone who has faced the challenge of cancer, and enlighten those who have been fortunate enough to have been spared. The author is a caring “in-the-trenches” clinician who actually took patient calls and raced out to hospital emergency rooms at all hours of the day and night for over twenty years. The quiet heroism of patients — sometimes rewarded with remissions and cures, and other times not — is presented without didactic lecturing and in a unique juxtaposition to a heartfelt appreciation for the medicinal value of nature. From the protozoans in the hindguts of termites to the hemlock woolly adelgid; from the trials and tribulations of patients enduring cancer treatments to the trials and tribulations of discovering meaning in life; from c-myc to siRNA — it’s all in here. The richness and uniqueness of this book is further augmented by the author’s numerous intensely personal and luxurious color photographs of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the author’s own personal sanctuary, that reveal the many, and often contradictory, moods of nature — moods which mirror the ups and downs of human life itself.

Bruce A. Silver, MD, FACP, earned his MD degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, in 1976. He received training in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1976-1979), also in Baltimore, and training in medical oncology at the Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland (1979-1982). He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology and practiced both specialties for twenty years. He has served as Chairman of Cancer Committees, Tumor Boards, and the Department of Medicine at various hospitals in which he has practiced. For twelve years he also served as Hospice Advisory Board Volunteer for two hospices in Montgomery County, Maryland. He is member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Presently, he is a consultant to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for new cancer drug development. He lives in southern Maryland with his wife, Malane, and two daughters, Lauren and Skye. During his off-duty hours from doctoring and clinical research he enjoys running, hiking, photography, beach vacations with his family, and likes to read intellectual stuff. This is his first book.