Synopsis Are you or is someone you love facing a cancer diagnosis in the prime of life? You’re not alone. The likelihood of developing cancer in one’s lifetime is 1 in 2 for males and 1 in 3 for females, and the numbers are rising. A cancer diagnosis at any age is traumatic, but young to middle-aged adults who are often raising or planning for children, establishing careers, and getting on their financial feet face unique challenges. When cancer strikes, this group can become overwhelmed by navigating treatment options, mounting debt from medical bills, threats to fertility, and the necessity of facing one’s mortality. It can become a mental battle ground. In Not Now, Cancer, I’m Busy, Melissa Trevathan-Minnis and Deanne Meeks Brown offer research, resources, and support to help you overcome the psychological trauma of cancer. Sharing their own personal stories, along with insights from other young cancer survivors, these two mental health professionals guide you through the rollercoaster of emotions from diagnosis and treatment to transitioning back to life post-treatment. While the challenges of cancer survivorship are many, so are the coping strategies available to help promote recovery and well-being. Not Now, Cancer, I’m Busy, addresses cancer through the lens of mental health and offers strategies to not only cope with the challenges of cancer, but to build a life full of meaning and intention despite them. From developing a fighting spirit and learning how to slow down, to breaking down barriers to mental health and spiritual growth, this book will help you tap into your personal strengths and resilience. Although a cancer diagnosis in early and midlife can be earth-shattering, the trauma of cancer can actually leave you stronger and better equipped-if you let it. WORDS OF PRAISE OMG! This is a fabulous book--the one everyone dealing with cancer has been waiting for! While the book is specifically addressed to YMAs (Young and Middle Adults) it is an exhaustive compendium of experience, issues, and directions for all those touched in any way by cancer—victims, survivors, family, friends and the rest of us who care in one way or another. From diagnosis to survivorship or to disability and death Melissa and Deanne offer amazingly comprehensive research, suggestions, and enlightenment at every step of the journey they take us on. Most interesting to me as a psychologist-psychoanalyst and survivor of cancer at age 21 are the sections on post-traumatic growth, developing a personal narrative, and the progression from surviving to thriving. Not Now, Cancer is an absolute triumph by two people who artfully weave their personal thriving experiences of themselves and of their families and friends with a wealth of incredible details of their cancer experiences that are equally well applicable to people of all ages who are faced with life-threatening diagnoses or circumstances. Congratulations Melissa and Deanne and thanks. --Lawrence Hedges, PhD, PsyD, ABPP, Director, the Listening Perspectives Study Center

Gail Konop Baker was a runner, yoga practitioner, doctor's wife, and lifelong subscriber to Prevention magazine. But right before her forty-sixth birthday, she heard the words that would forever change her life: Just to be safe, I think we should biopsy. It was the beginning of her yearlong battle with breast cancer and its fallout - a battle that would upstage any midlife crisis she'd worried was waiting in the wings. Cancer Is a Bitch is her raw, moving, and funny account of juggling midlife, motherhood, and marriage with a rogue boob - and, ultimately, triumphing. It will, as author Lolly Winston said, ''crack [you] up one minute, then bring [you] to tears the next.''

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "I had the choice to come back ... or not. I chose to return when I realized that 'heaven' is a state, not a place" In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body began shutting down—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was released from the hospital within weeks—without a trace of cancer in her body! Within this enhanced e-book, Anita recounts—in words and on video—stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge. In "Dying to Be Me," Anita Freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, "being love," and the true magnificence of each and every human being!

Let's face it, cancer sucks. This book provides real-life advice from real-life teens designed to help teens live with a parent who is fighting cancer. One million American teenagers live with a parent who is fighting cancer. It's a hard blow for those already navigating high school, preparing for college, and becoming increasingly independent. Author Maya Silver was 15 when her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. She and her dad, Marc, have combined their family's personal experience with advice from dozens of medical professionals and real stories from 100 teens—all going through the same thing Maya did. The topic of cancer can be difficult to approach, but in a highly designed, engaging style, this book gives practical guidance that includes: How to talk about the diagnosis (and what does diagnosis even mean, anyway?) The best outlets for stress (punching a wall is not a great one, but should it happen, there are instructions for a patch job) How to deal with friends (especially one the ones with 'pity eyes') Whether to tell the teachers and guidance counselors and what they should know (how not to get embarrassed in class) What happens in a therapy session and how to find a support group if you want one A special section for parents also gives tips on strategies for sharing the news and explaining cancer to a child, making sure your child doesn't become the parent, what to do if the outlook is grim, and tips for how to live life after cancer. My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks allows teens to see that they are not alone. That no matter how rough things get, they will get through this difficult time. That everything they're feeling is ok. Essays from Gilda Radner's "Gilda's Club" annual contest are an especially poignant and moving testimony of how other teens dealt with their family's situation. Praise for My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks: "Wisely crafted into a wonderfully warm, engaging and informative book that reads like a chat with a group of friends with helpful advice from the experts." —Paula K. Rauch MD, Director of the Marjorie E. Korff Parenting At a Challenging Time Program "A must read for parents, kids, teachers and medical staff who know anyone with cancer. You will learn something on every page." —Anna Gottlieb, MPA, Founder and CEO Gilda's Club Seattle "This book is a 'must have' for oncologists, cancer treatment centers and families with teenagers." —Kathleen McCue, MA, LSW, CCLS, Director of the Children's Program at The Gathering Place, Cleveland, OH "My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks provides a much-needed toolkit for teens coping with a parent's cancer." —Jane Saccaro, CEO of Camp Kesem, a camp for children who have a parent with cancer

'Your Life in Your Hands' considers both breast and ovarian cancer. It puts forward the message that the disease can be prevented and effectively treated by simple diet and lifestyle modifications. This paperback edition includes case studies of both women and men following the Plant Programme.

Newbery-winning Rules meets Counting by 7s in this affecting story of a girl’s devotion to her brother and what it means to be home When eleven-year-old Thyme Owens’ little brother, Val, is accepted into a new cancer drug trial, it’s just the second chance that he needs. But it also means the Owens family has to move to New York, thousands of miles away from Thyme’s best friend and everything she knows and loves. The island of Manhattan doesn’t exactly inspire new beginnings, but Thyme tries to embrace the change for what it is: temporary. After Val’s treatment shows real promise and Mr. Owens accepts a full-time position in the city, Thyme has to face the frightening possibility that the move to New York is permanent. Thyme loves her brother, and knows the trial could save his life—she’d give anything for him to be well—but she still wants to go home, although the guilt of not wanting to stay is agonizing. She finds herself even more mixed up when her heart feels the tug of new friends, a first crush, and even a crotchety neighbor and his sweet whistling bird. All Thyme can do is count the minutes, the hours, and days, and hope time can bring both a miracle for Val and a way back home. With equal parts heart and humor, Melanie Conklin’s debut is a courageous and charming story of love and family—and what it means to be counted.

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." —Sally Rooney, author of Normal People "Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." —Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations