Cancer Combat: Cancer Servivors Share Their Guerrilla Tactics to Help You Win the Fight of Your Life

In their own words, more than 100 cancer survivors offer tightly targeted observations, anecdotes and hard-earned tips gleaned from their experience. The mostly brief, highly personal signed entries are arranged in sections and chapters that correspond with stages of illness and treatment, from dealing with diagnosis through the section ""Going to War,"" which covers such topics as hospital care, radiation and chemotherapy, to a final section on aspects of recovery. These distinct and authoritative voices deliver invaluable accounts of specific aspects of living with cancer (e.g., responses and approaches to chemo-induced baldness; telling people that you have cancer; fitting treatment regimens into working and family life) and the inestimably worthwhile overall message that having cancer and dealing with it is an individual's own experience. ""There are not rights and wrongs but personal choices,"" notes Dean King, whose battle with Hodgkin's disease prompted him, with his wife and Pearlroth, a lawyer who survived non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, to interview other cancer veterans and 50 health professionals whose work assists those battling the disease. This report from the cancer front eloquently illustrates the broad sweep of the disease and the even broader range of coping mechanisms. Its contributors are a chorus of ""empathetic voices"" whose real-life guidance is delivered with hopefulness and humor. (Jan.)