Understanding Cancer: A Patient's Guide to Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment

The greatest need of anyone with cancer is to understand the disease -- its diagnosis, treatment options, and the often devastating experience of having cancer. In Understanding Cancer, Dr. Norman Coleman explains how to gather information about different treatments and how to interpret that information to make decisions. He helps the person with cancer prepare for visits to doctors and the hospital, and to make those visits as productive as possible. He distills the often complex medical terms and the concepts underlying the statistics and percentages used to characterize medical conditions. With clear, in-depth discussions of pretreatment staging of disease, the biology of cancer, how successful treatment is defined, and how best to manage one's time, Understanding Cancer helps people with cancer become active participants in the decision-making process.

Today, people with cancer face more alternatives and decisions than ever before -- a situation that can be daunting, Dr. Coleman notes, but ultimately empowering. While most doctors try to provide complete information to their patients, it's impossible for any health care professional to provide all the detailed information a patient and family really need to make informed decisions about treatment. Although this book does not provide recommendations about a specific medical problem and its treatment, it does explain how the benefits of treatment are assessed, how to interpret the results of those assessments, and how to be a full partner in determining the course of medical treatment. Topics include:

* Diagnosis and Treatment: What You Can Expect

* Cancer: Where Does It Come From?

* Diagnostic Tests and Staging Studies: Gathering Information

* Making Decisions about Treatment: How Success Is Measured

* Weighing the Long-Term Risks and Benefits of Treatment

* An Overview of Conventional Treatments

* Participating in Research Trials: What They're All About

* Patient Stories: Four Clinical Case Studies

* Patient's Checklist

"Many similar 'how to' guides have preceded this one. But few have offered the distilled clarity that Norm Coleman offers cancer patients here. In these pages they will find relief in his realistic and understandable explanation about the goals of cancer treatment. He guides the reader through the quagmire of cancer treatment decision-making by making the patient a part of the process. This may seem simple to someone who has not had to endure this exhausting exercise. It is far from simple, and one of Dr. Coleman's outstanding talents is his ability to simplify complex information... This book is written by a physician who has devoted his life to curing the ills of ignorance about cancer. That is his gift to us, his readers." -- from the Foreword, by Ellen L. Stovall, Executive Director, National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship and 26-year cancer survivor

C. Norman Coleman, M.D. is a Alvin T. and Viola D. Fuller American Cancer Society Professor and Chairman of the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy at the Department of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School.