Dear Lit Loves,
Happy New Year! In December, I won a giveaway sponsored by GoodReads of the upcoming book release titled Healing: When A Nurse Becomes A Patient by Theresa Brown, RN. The "official" release date for the book is April 2022. I wanted to read this book because Ms. Brown writes about her experience coping with cancer from a nurse's perspective. And interestingly, she has experience as a nurse on a hospital bone marrow transplant unit as well as a hospice home health nurse. Given my own experience with skin cancer and chronic illness along with being a caregiver/advocate for my dad who lost his battle with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma as well as witnessing my mom's experience with breast cancer, this book highly intrigued me. And it did not disappoint.
Ms. Brown discovers what our health care system experience is like as a breast cancer patient as she already has broad experience as a nurse within the U.S. health care system. Not only does the book give a sharp-focused summary of the diagnostics and treatment of breast cancer, but it weaves in some of Ms. Brown's experiences as a nurse treating cancer patients as well. From the initial suspicious mammogram to a breast biopsy, breast surgery, radiation treatment, and aftercare following treatment for breast cancer, the reader gets a firsthand look at what it is like to be diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. Ms. Brown discovers throughout her cancer journey that our U.S. health care system often lacks compassionate oncology personnel. From a radiologist who tells the author that the breast mass looks mean to having to wait over a long holiday weekend for biopsy results that are readily available, the reader sees how once a patient receives a cancer diagnosis, that individual's world is tipped over and spinning precariously while everyone else in the world goes about their business because they did not just have their world rocked by a cancer diagnosis.
Oncology departments are places no one wants to find themselves. If your cancer treatment involves radiation, you likely will be visiting a radiation oncology department in the basement of a cancer center or hospital. It's the medical personnel who stop to acknowledge the seriousness of the patient's diagnosis and the fatigue of treatment that often mean the most to cancer patients. Whether you are a nurse, teacher, corporate CEO, college student, VP of marketing, or truck driver, life changes drastically once you are diagnosed as a cancer patient. When cancer comes knocking at your front door, your reality gets shaken like a snow globe. You never forget that moment. Often a cancer diagnosis feels like a sucker-punch to the stomach and a forearm hitting you in the face. Cells within your body have gone rogue and it's time to find the best medical oncologist, surgical oncologist, and quite often radiation oncologist. Cancer patients discover a new reality of medical terms, testing procedures, and treatment plans that are foreign to them and yet, it's time to get ready to step up to the plate and proceed or not with treatment.
For Ms. Brown, the pink associated with breast cancer fundraising is stereotypical almost delegating breast cancer as "only" a female cancer. We all know that men can experience breast cancer as well. Breast cancer is more than the color pink. Breast cancer diagnosis happens all year long and not just the month of October when you often see massive pink campaigns as fundraising is elevated for research and care. And for Ms. Brown, having breast cancer is not so much a war whereby her body is invaded by foreign aggressors; it is more that suddenly the cells within her own body decided to become negatively activated and then started reproducing incredibly fast with dangerous implications.
Finally, I liked that Ms. Brown addressed how her experience as a cancer patient affected her as she resumed working as a home hospice nurse. It gave her a whole new perspective on what cancer patients and their families are experiencing when hospice arrives. And I think Ms. Brown addressed the ambiguity of calling herself a "cancer survivor" if as a patient you are tested on a regular basis to determine if a cancer has recurred. There is always a constant uneasiness each and every time a cancer patient undergoes blood tests, mammograms as well as CT or PET scans. Cancer patients always have a nagging notion or worry of is this the test that will demonstrate that a cancer has returned for another round in the ring?
I admired the book and thought it was well-written. Some of the chapters were quite short compared to others and occasionally the book chapters alternated back and forth between the author's experience with breast cancer versus a memory from her years as an oncology nurse. For me, I found myself wanting one cohesive story of the breast cancer experience. I found myself often wanting to read about what happened next regarding her cancer experience as opposed to a brief reflection on working as an oncology nurse, but to me as a writer I feel that may have been more of an editing decision than a writer's decision. I would highly recommend this book!
Till my next review,
Grace (Amy)
