cover image Patient Siggy: Hope and Healing in Cyberspace

Patient Siggy: Hope and Healing in Cyberspace

Sigourney Cheek, . . Trade Paper, $13.95 (249pp) ISBN 978-1-59652-503-0

Approaching her 60th birthday, Cheek (aka “Patient Siggy”) receives the disturbing diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which then transforms to the even more acute Richter’s syndrome, a B-cell lymphoma. As she copes with the realization that she has cancer and begins chemotherapy, she is unable to summon the energy for phone calls, so she decides to e-mail friends and relatives. One e-mail leads to another, and before long, Cheek is communicating with 160 people. The e-mail chain becomes a source of healing and inspiration for Cheek, and as she continues to open up her life to others, prayers and good wishes fill her inbox. Cheek chronicles her progress in an ongoing journal, incorporating e-mail messages along the way. Generous and gracious throughout, the author even entertains more than 30 friends at her long-awaited birthday celebration on the island of Mallorca, Spain, where she has always summered. Cheek, a transplanted Yankee who lives in Nashville, was raised Catholic but attends an Episcopal church. While she maintains that her sacred prayer chain aids in her healing, she’s not preachy and often finds a comical twist (a perk of chemo is “No bad hair days”). While her story is, indeed, inspirational, her writing becomes repetitious as she segues between events as they happen and e-mailed accounts. (May)