My Breast: One Woman's Cancer Story

by Joyce Wadler

Book Overview

After her breast cancer diagnosis in 1991, Joyce Wadler, a smart, savvy, forty-something New York writer, fought back with a grounded, roll-with-the-punches outlook. She took charge of her treatments,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201632837
• ISBN13: 9780201632835
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Harrowing And Humorous

Published in 1992, Ms. Wadler's story is engrossing, and especially interesting when she sticks to her cancer and its treatments, instead of digressing into descriptions of her rather flaky relationships with three, on-again, off-again boyfriends. Based on the author's upbeat yet realistic attitude, and the fact that she had an apparently slow-growing, "good" type of malignancy--medullary cancer--I would suppose that she is alive and thriving today."My Breast" is a fast read, and one that would be particularly appropriate for anyone who has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. The more frightening aspects of Ms. Wadler's diagnosis and treatment are well balanced by her sense of humor and positive attitude.

Totally readable.

"The surgeon took it out using a local, and when he was done, I asked to see it. It was the size of a robin's egg, with the gray brain-like matter which give it its name, medullary cancer. It rested in the middle of a larger ball of pink and white breast tissue, sliced down the center like a hard-boiled egg...and I looked at it hard, trying to figure it out. We did not know it was cancer until twenty minutes later, when they had almost finished stitching me up and the pathology report came back, and then I was especially glad I had looked. Mano a mano, eyeball to eyeball. This is a modern story. Me and my cancer. I won."Any book that starts off this way has got to be a terrific read and this one is. A sharp-eyed, witty, chin-up personal account by a journalist who keeps it close to home but happens to be a great mediator of the graphic details and the medical context. Not many breast cancer patients will be lucky enough to have the rare, unaggressive medullary form that Joyce Wadler thought she had, but even she had her diagnosis hedged later in the game and thus underwent the full round of surgery, radiation and chemo. Will appeal to: All breast cancer readers, well or ill.

A dress rehearsal for laughing about dying

This is a book about an upsetting subject that will cheer you up. I read it while in the throes of treatment for a completely different but also grisly medical problem. It took my mind so completely off my own situation that when I was undressing for bed later I looked down and was quite astonished to see no scar on my breast. At the same time it also addressed my own feelings in a way none of my doctors did. It helped so much to see that someone who is smart, nice and funny can be hit with a medical problem that is stupid, obnoxious and fundamentally unamusing. Maybe I too can be okay even though I'm not okay. The thought of dying really doesn't kill your own sense of the humor and poetry that lurks in hospital corridors, but it's isolating to discover that trying to share the lighter moments with others will only upset them. So it was a relief to be able to join the cocktail party in Wadler's mind -- this book reads like Nora Ephron (``Heartburn'') getting sick instead of divorced. If you've been there, you'll understand why I laughed to read Wadler's wry comment on doctors who disagreed about how to save her life: ``Great, I think, duelling doctors. I suppose it's why people get second opinions, but it's not doing a lot for my confidence about the profession.'' Even if you haven't, you'll close this book feeling glad to have joined Wadler's ``dress rehearsal for dying.''

A must-read for anyone going down the cancer path

This is not a psycho-babble, how-to-cope book nor is it a dry, dull medical book chock-a-block with technoterms. Instead, it is a funny insiders travelogue that makes anyone feel like they are not alone. My mother took it with her anywhere and often referred to the author as "my funny friend in New York."