Synopses & Reviews
The definition of irony is being a nurse and a nursing instructor, who suddenly ends up being a patient (who knows way too much) with breast cancer. Well, maybe irony isn’t the exact word Maryellen D. Brisbois uses to describe her situation in her book Why I Hated Pink – it’s just that the word she does use, while a whole lot funnier, is also more profane than should be used in this format. It’s all here; the shock, the tears, the anger, the horrifying treatments and frustrating medical establishment, but there’s also a lot to laugh at – once you get past the whole life and death thing. Oh yeah – there are also all those damn pink ribbons.
“Are you sitting down?” I swear that’s what the nurse practitioner said as I picked up the phone early one December morning in 2006. They really say that to people, It’s not just in the movies!” So begins this moving and hilarious memoir written by a nursing instructor turned cancer patient whose life and experience with the world of cancer treatment has just gone from being the caregiver to being the one who needs the care – and she had just celebrated her 41st birthday a couple of days before.
“I mean, I never thought I’d find myself in an MRI machine lying on my stomach with my breasts hanging toward the floor in these “cone-like” compartments. All I could think was that a man must have invented such a thing.” Thankfully, the Maryellen D. Brisbois story has a happy ending – and a lot of laughs along the way. But this is serious book, about a serious subject that affects far too many women; our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. Many of them will be facing the fight of their lives – as they fight FOR their lives. Reading Why I Hated Pink by Maryellen D. Brisbois will make that fight a little easier for those women, and offer a much needed laugh along the way.
Review
Michael Korda Author of Man to Man: Surviving Prostate Cancer For every woman who has feared breast cancer, or has been diagnosed with it, and for the men in their lives, this book is must reading.
Review
Library Journal Invaluable....A sort of support group between covers.
Synopsis
5th Anniversary Edition! Featuring a new Foreword by the author, as well as an additional chapter that follows up on the lives of the original contributors. With Uplift, bestselling author Barbara Delinsky, whose life has been shaped by her mother's breast cancer as well as her own, created a resource she wished she'd had for herself during her own treatment: one that is filled with all the helpful advice that only the women who have already been there can tell us about -- from tips on even the smallest details of daily life to inspiring personal anecdotes that amuse, comfort, and instruct. Here, readers can find answers to all the questions they were afraid to -- or never even knew how to -- ask: What kind of deodorant can I use during radiation? Are there certain foods that really satisfy on treatment days? How do I address my surgery with my coworkers? Will I still feel feminine? And what about a sex life? Practical, warm, often funny, always reassuring, Uplift arms readers with the various means by which countless women diagnosed with breast cancer have faced their fears, survived their illness, and bravely gotten on with life and love, career and family.
Synopsis
5th Anniversary Edition! Featuring a new Foreword by the author, as well as an additional chapter that follows up on the lives of the original contributors.
With Uplift, bestselling author Barbara Delinsky, whose life has been shaped by her mother's breast cancer as well as her own, created a resource she wished she'd had for herself during her own treatment: one that is filled with all the helpful advice that only the women who have already been there can tell us about -- from tips on even the smallest details of daily life to inspiring personal anecdotes that amuse, comfort, and instruct. Here, readers can find answers to all the questions they were afraid to -- or never even knew how to -- ask: What kind of deodorant can I use during radiation? Are there certain foods that really satisfy on treatment days? How do I address my surgery with my coworkers? Will I still feel feminine? And what about a sex life? Practical, warm, often funny, always reassuring, Uplift arms readers with the various means by which countless women diagnosed with breast cancer have faced their fears, survived their illness, and bravely gotten on with life and love, career and family.
About the Author
Barbara Delinsky's bestselling novels include
Flirting with Pete, An Accidental Woman, and
Coast Road, which featured a heroine who was a breast cancer survivor. She serves on the Massachusetts General Hospital Women's Cancer Visiting Committee. Readers can write to her c/o P.O. Box 812894, Wellesley, MA, 02482-0026, or via the Internet at www.barbaradelinsky.com.
Table of Contents
Contents Foreword
1 On Diagnosis: First Things First
2 Losing a Breast: Practical and Emotional
3 Radiation: Soaking Up the Rays
4 Chemo and Hair: Mane Matters
5 Chemo and Everything Else: A Smorgasbord
6 Taking the Reins: Regaining Control
7 Family: Our Inheritance
8 Friends: We Pick 'Em
9 The Workplace: Making It User-Friendly
10 Support Groups: From Traditional to Offbeat
11 Humor: You Gotta Laugh...
12 Men: By, For, and About
13 Exercise: Making the Body Better
14 Religion: Bringing In the Big Gun
15 Pure Uplift: Wrapping It Up with a Bow
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
An Invitation from Uplift