Here are 100 books that A Breast Cancer Alphabet fans have personally recommended if you like
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My life is divided into two parts: before I left the cult I was involved in during my 20s, and after. Leaving the cult created a reckoning in my life unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. It was both the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and the best. As a result, I connect deeply with others’ stories of grief, loss, and the challenging times in life that make us. As an author, I have carried these themes into my mystery novels. I hope you experience as much resonance from the books on this list as I have.
What if the worst possible thing that happened to you was the best possible thing? After a cataclysmic injury to her brain, author Bolte Taylor walks us through what she learned about being human because of this event. ‘Everything is energy’ is the message I walked away from this book with, and I remember that message weekly.
Somehow, this neuroscientist is able to discuss our spiritual nature by explaining what happened to her when her ‘brain went offline.’ It is a beautiful and affecting book that, as I say, has stuck with me for years.
"Transformative...[Taylor's] experience...will shatter [your] own perception of the world."-ABC News
The astonishing New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment
On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and…
Life caught me by surprise when our youngest son was born with a birth defect that launched our family into the world of surgeries, and treatments. After experiencing the management of chronic care for our child firsthand, I realized how important it is to share personal stories and experiences. It enables empathy and a deeper understanding and appreciation of what patients and families go through. Autobiographical accounts of patients and families are still very limited. We need more people to come forward and share their own patient/family experiences in order to promote the betterment of healthcare and healing through relating with others and learning from others’ experiences.
Imagine being a medical school student in the best of health and full of spirit and ambition, and suddenly being engulfed by a strange and mysterious illness that even the best of doctors in the most renowned hospitals are unable to appropriately diagnose, let alone treat. This chilling story of a doctor who literally chases his own cure is a great example of the much-needed patient advocacy that may often be required to diagnose and treat rare and complex conditions effectively. The author’s passion for finding the underlying cause of his disease (Castleman’s disease) and experimenting with innovative unlikely combinations of drug therapies makes his story memorable and truly inspiring.
LOS ANGELES TIMES AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure—and became a champion for a new approach to medical research.
“A wonderful and moving chronicle of a doctor’s relentless pursuit, this book serves both patients and physicians in demystifying the science that lies behind medicine.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene
David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for…
During my medical career, specializing as a psychiatrist in a cancer hospital in England, I observed huge variations in the way patients respond to the diagnosis of physical disease. Some become overwhelmed by distress, some carry on just as before, but others make positive and creative changes that are inspiring to witness. Coping can be especially challenging and complex for clinicians who find themselves in the role of patient. My five chosen books are all written by doctors and illustrate how the illness experience has shaped their lives. Now retired from medicine, I am based in New Zealand, and I have interests in writing, choral singing, and animal welfare.
I have read a lot about the “near-death experiences” (NDEs) reported by thousands of people who have recovered from life-threatening illnesses, so I was intrigued by this best-selling memoir.
Eben Alexander, a renowned academic neurosurgeon, contracted meningitis at age 54 and, after emerging from a coma in intensive care, recalled memories of journeying through heavenly realms. True glimpses of an afterlife or the hallucinations of a malfunctioning brain?
Although I am open to spiritual explanations, some aspects of his vividly described experience and of the family revelations that followed seemed to me hardly credible. But he writes with sincerity, and there is no doubt that his beliefs and relationships have been permanently transformed since his illness.
Internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander always considered himself a man of science. His unwavering belief in evidence-based medicine fuelled a career in the top medical institutions of the world. But all this was set to change. One morning in 2008 he fell into a coma after suffering a rare form of bacterial meningitis. Scans of his brain revealed massive damage. Death was deemed the most likely outcome. As his family prepared themselves for the worst, something miraculous happened. Dr Alexander's brain went from near total inactivity to awakening. He made a full recovery but he was never the same.…
Life caught me by surprise when our youngest son was born with a birth defect that launched our family into the world of surgeries, and treatments. After experiencing the management of chronic care for our child firsthand, I realized how important it is to share personal stories and experiences. It enables empathy and a deeper understanding and appreciation of what patients and families go through. Autobiographical accounts of patients and families are still very limited. We need more people to come forward and share their own patient/family experiences in order to promote the betterment of healthcare and healing through relating with others and learning from others’ experiences.
This book is near and dear to me because of the topic it is based on. Anorectal malformation is a rare congenital defect that affects one in 5000 babies born. The book does a great job of bringing to light the real-life stories and experiences of patients and their families as they learn to navigate the healthcare system while aiming for the best outcome for their babies. The book gives a platform for raising awareness of birth defects such as anorectal malformations and tries to overcome the stigma associated with them. The book is a great compilation of stories of patients with anorectal malformations and serves as a great resource for other patients faced with a similar diagnosis.
This book describes with raw honesty and deep emotion the journeys that families go on when their child is born with an Imperforate Anus (IA) also known as Anorectal Malformation (ARM). It is a rare congenital condition that affects ONE in 5000 births which is very rarely talked about or known in the wider community. It reveals the many difficulties both emotionally and physically that babies, children and adults living with IA/ARM endure. It is a book filled with love, courage, resilience and hope. It shows the importance of having access to good information and medical staff who are compassionate…
I am an expert on being a cancer patient because I was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2017. I am also a former oncology and hospice nurse. A cancer diagnosis always feels like a calamity and my work with very sick cancer patients showed me how serious the disease can be. I also thought that our health care system would react to cancer with compassion, but I was wrong. I felt on my own as a patient, and that experience led me to reflect on my nursing work. Healing alternates between me being a nurse and a patient. The alteration shows the failings of our health care system, and how to make it more caring.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer I sampled outside information about breast cancer sparingly and this was the only book that made the cut. I dipped into it when I had a question and otherwise left it alone, but afterward I was usually glad I checked to see what Susan Love had to say and appreciated the big picture context that the book offers. If you can afford it, get the most recent edition since it will be the most accurate about treatment plans and ongoing research.
For a woman faced with a diagnosis of breast cancer, the information available today is vast, uneven, and confusing. For more than two decades, readers have relied on Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book to guide them through this frightening thicket of research and opinion to find the best possible options for their particular situations. This sixth edition explains exciting advances in targeted treatments, hormonal therapies, safer chemotherapy, and immunologic approaches as well as new forms of surgery and radiation. There is extensive guidance for the increasing number of women living for years with metastatic breast cancer. With Dr. Love's warm…
I’ve been passionate about animals, the environment, and social justice since I was a child. As an adult I have been frustrated—even enraged—that so many products and practices are considered safe and “normal” even though they harm wildlife, pets, and people. I think it's bizarre that people imagine themselves as separate from the chemicals they spray in their homes and their yards, even as they breathe in the toxins. I hope that the concept of “transcorporeality,” which urges us to see our own bodies as literally part of the environment, will convince people that environmentalism isn’t optional but is a vital part of human health and social justice.
Like everything Audre Lorde wrote, this slim book is powerful and revolutionary. Lorde refuses to see her breast cancer as just a personal problem, and instead, as a Black lesbian feminist, traces its origins to larger economic, industrial, and political forces, including food additives and air pollution. Her activist research is impressive, but it is her fierce, bold critiques that I find most inspiring. She calls out the medical establishment, “We live in a profit economy and there is no profit in the prevention of cancer; there is only profit in the treatment of cancer.” She condemns psychological “causes” of cancer, “It is easier to demand happiness than clean up the environment.” Lorde calls us to understand ourselves within a matrix of social and environmental forces and to make change.
Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
A Penguin Classic
First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself…
In my high school creative writing class, my teacher once said that good writing was a bit like looking at a star. If you look directly at it, it gets a little fuzzy and hard to see. But if you look just off to the side, the star becomes vivid and clear. That, to me, is exactly the power of spooky stories for young readers. We all deal with monsters, to varying degrees, throughout our lives. Even kids. But if we look at it just off to the side, through the angle of a fun, spooky story, those monsters suddenly become much more comprehensible. More faceable. More beatable.
It’s been said by smarter people than me how writing horror for kids isn’t about scaring them, it’s about showing them how brave they are.
A Monster Calls is the perfect illustration of that. The scariness and the spookiness are a stand-in for the real-life horrors that this kid is facing. Kids deal with a lot, and this book is the perfect example of how to survive when the worst happens.
The artwork too—wow! I wish I could get some of this artwork to hang on my walls. Absolutely gorgeous book.
The bestselling novel and major film about love, loss and hope from the twice Carnegie Medal-winning Patrick Ness.
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking…
I spent nearly 30 years consulting with employers about the design and operation of the health insurance and retirement benefits they provided their workers. In my work, I was familiar with economic studies showing that workers’ wages and salaries have been increasingly skewed toward higher earners and was convinced the results were less pronounced for workers' total rewards.. In developing my analysis I came to understand that the cost of employees’ health insurance was consuming a large share of workers’ growing rewards. This led me to explore how the US health system was imposing much higher costs on workers than any other segment of society and how we might address the problem.
One prevailing theory about the high cost of U.S. health care compared to other highly developed nations is that the prices charged for goods and services are simply higher in the United States and elsewhere.
Reinhardt is one of the leading proponents of this school of thought and this book summarizes his reasoning on the subject and how to deal with it.
From a giant of health care policy, an engaging and enlightening account of why American health care is so expensive-and why it doesn't have to be
Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of the U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country,…
I am a University Distinguished Professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I have devoted my career to studying service quality and ways to improve it, first in the commercial sector and, since 2001, in healthcare. I started my healthcare journey studying at the Mayo Clinic, and I have since done in-residence research at other health systems, most recently, Henry Ford Health in Detroit. My work includes research on improving the patient and family experience in cancer care. Kindness and dignity are vitally important in healthcare – and too often missing. I am on a personal mission to enhance healing in all its forms.
This is a much-needed book written with grace, insight, and feeling. Dr. Nuila is a physician at Ben Taub, Houston’s biggest hospital primarily serving medically vulnerable, low-income patients.
Every page of this book is about assuring kind, dignified healthcare for the poor. As Nuila writes: “… I try to find my patients’ stories. It’s my favorite part of being a doctor. I don’t mean their medical histories. I mean the circumstances of their lives. All of the information helps me to better empathize with them, but the stories also make medical care more efficient, more personal…” (p.14).
If you believe that access to quality healthcare is a right and not a privilege, as I do, then I urge you to read this marvelous book that teaches, inspires, and reminds us of healthcare’s true mission.
“Nuila’s storytelling gifts place him alongside colleagues like Atul Gawande.” —Los Angeles Times
This “compelling mixture of health care policy and gripping stories from the frontlines of medicine” (The Guardian) explores the question: where does an uninsured person go when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors?
Here, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital that prioritizes people over profit. First, we meet Stephen, the restaurant franchise manager who signed up for his company’s lowest priced plan, only to find himself facing insurmountable costs after a cancer diagnosis. Then…
I spent nearly 30 years consulting with employers about the design and operation of the health insurance and retirement benefits they provided their workers. In my work, I was familiar with economic studies showing that workers’ wages and salaries have been increasingly skewed toward higher earners and was convinced the results were less pronounced for workers' total rewards.. In developing my analysis I came to understand that the cost of employees’ health insurance was consuming a large share of workers’ growing rewards. This led me to explore how the US health system was imposing much higher costs on workers than any other segment of society and how we might address the problem.
John Wennberg is a medical doctor and researcher who has spent much of the last half century analyzing the practice of medicine across the United States.
He has used Medicare patients’ treatment records to show that health delivery is often more dependent on the supply of providers and facilities in an area than the expected demand for such treatment of the area population.
He and his associates have also shown that more intensive treatment generally does not result in better care and sometimes leads to more adverse outcomes.
Written by a groundbreaking figure of modern medical study, Tracking Medicine is an eye-opening introduction to the science of health care delivery, as well as a powerful argument for its relevance in shaping the future of our country. An indispensable resource for those involved in public health and health policy, this book uses Dr. Wennberg's pioneering research to provide a framework for understanding the health care crisis; and outlines a roadmap for real change in the future. It is also a useful tool for anyone interested in understanding and forming their own opinion on the current debate.
