DYING: A Book of Comfort
Companion website about dying, bereavement, loss, grief and aging with spirit
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Coping with cancer• Cancer blogs and personal stories about cancer • Facts about cancer • A reading list about cancer • Tools for coping • Checking out clinical trials Cancer once meant a death sentence. Increasingly, as medical scientists find new ways to combat it, it is becoming a chronic disease. Prevention is the best approach to fighting cancer, but when it strikes it helps to find knowledgeable support and to know the facts about how to fight and cope with it. Let me know of links to useful resources that are not yet listed here.
(incomplete--more to come) A Cancer Survivor's Almanac, by Barbara Hoffman Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer, by Patrick C. Walsh and Janet Farrar Worthington Everyone's Guide to Cancer Therapy, by Malin Dollinger Living with a Brain Tumor: Dr. Peter Black's Guide to Taking Control of Your Treatment, by Peter Black with Sharon Cloud Hogan Lung Cancer: Myths, Facts, Choices -- and Hope, by Claudia I. Henschke, Peggy McCarthy, and Sarah Wernick Prostate And Cancer: A Family Guide To Diagnosis, Treatment And Survival, by Sheldon Marks Share the Care, by Cappy Capossela and Sheila Warnock Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness (critical illness, in his case from cancer, as a spiritual journey) Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face (about growing up with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that severely disfigured her face) Handler, Evan. Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (recounting with grim humor his battle with leukemia and his hellish journey through the land of the sick) Hood, Ann. Do Not Go Gentle: The Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time (her search for a miraculous cure for her father's inoperable lung cancer) Kamenentz, Rodger. Terra Infirma (a searing recollection of his mother's life and her death from cancer, his mother "yo-yoing between smothering affection and a fierce anger") Lord, Audre. The Cancer Journals (explores her breast cancer and mastectomy) Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (spine cancer makes him paraplegic, but liberates his imagination) Williams, Marjorie. The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate (the last third is about her losing battle with cancer) |
Recovery means being able to manage my illness to the point that you dont know Im schizophrenic unless I tell you.
from the NAMI report card on the states (you can click on Full Report to get full PDF file) We may not be able to cure a physical disease or erase psychological damage, but, even in our final moments, we can strive toward wholeness. We can be parents who have open eyes and surer footing. How does healing occur? First, by accepting the truth of the wound. By experiencing the pain rather than running from it, and that includes letting our children have their own pain. Healing also occurs by imbuing the facts with meaning, texture, and voice creating a story.
~ Linda Blachman, in Another Morning: Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer "Have you ever noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?"
~Walker Percy, The Moviegoer "I know why Tony Snow, George W's press secretary, called his bout with colon cancer, 'the best thing that ever happened to me.' And why my friend, Gilda Radner said about cancer, 'If it wasn't for the downside, everyone would want it.'
"The best side-effect of fighting a life-threatening disease is learning how to live. "When you're made frighteningly aware of how little time you may have left, learn what is important: family, friends and helping others." ~ Joel Siegel, after ten years of fighting colon cancer "Maybe we should think about some sort of oral history project. Or maybe we should just leave something behind for those close to us: letters, a diary, tapes or even videos. Just something to say, 'I was here. I lived through this. And this is what I learned.' I guess what I'm really talking about is some way to tell those who will follow in our footsteps, 'You're not alone.'
-- Leroy Sievers  DYING: A BOOK OF COMFORT, life-affirming selections provide comfort when the end of life is increasingly a possibility |
