Books about Life Threatening Illness
The author spent a year living his days as if they were his last. The insights he gained in so doing would be useful to anyone, whether facing a life-threatening illness or not. His message, simply stated, is that each of us will die at some point, so we might as well face the reality of death now rather than living in mortal fear of the unknown. The book contains meditations, poems, musings on what happens after death (both to the body and to the spirit), and words full of the wisdom of someone who has devoted himself to savouring the moment.
Sixty-eight year old Margaret Frazer was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 1985. A retired school-teacher, she lived alone in Toronto. She had been an outspoken activist for many important causes during her ten years of retirement. Friends and acquaintances of hers, many of whom were strangers to each other, came together to form a supportive community when it was revealed that she would soon die a painful death. They called themselves "Friends of Margaret", or "Margaret's team". These people gave new meaning to words like love and charity by making it possible for Margaret to die at home. That spring, they formed schedules to stay with Margaret in her house; they cooked meals, scrubbed floors, told stories, held hands, faced their own fears of death, formed friendships, and watched an amazing woman die a graceful death.
At times I had trouble reading this book because it spared no detail in describing the final, often painful, days of Margaret's life. Perhaps at the best of times this information would have been unsettling to me, but I found it particularly disturbing now because so many of my own fears of death are front and centre. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was grateful that I had persisted in spite of some mixed feelings. For me, reading this book has been uplifting and inspirational.
The story of people coming together for someone they love reminded me of the support that converged upon Graveley House when my friend Gayle Whetstone was dying of leukemia. There were round-the-clock contingents of friends and neighbours on the scene to oversee Gayle's care, there were regular acts of beauty and kindness, and there was a true sense of community. I wonder if someone on Gayle's team had read Twelve Weeks in Spring and found guidance in its pages. I would like to think people all across the country have benefited from the example set by Margaret Frazer and her team of supporters. Everyone should die surrounded by such love.
This book is a collection of the author's wise, simple, and heart-warming stories, like those you might hear exchanged between friends drinking tea together by the kitchen table. The author has been living with chronic illness for many years. That aspect of her life, as well as her struggle to establish a unique identity within the medical community, influences the quality of her prose. This book has quickly become an international best-seller. (As an aside, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program was first devised under Dr. Remen's co-direction; Commonweal is the model upon which the program for the Callanish Healing Retreat I attended last year was based.)
Dr. Ornish is best known for his research which showed the revolutionary result that diet and lifestyle changes could lead to a reversal in the progression of heart disease. He has extended his body of work to highlight the critical importance of social factors (relationships, community, friendship, support groups, lines of communication, love) in both avoiding and recovering from life-threatening illness. He cites a large volume of scientific studies which support his claims, and he divulges personal information about his own journey through life, shedding light on his motivation and intentions. I highly recommend this book. It stands out in its class as unique and refreshingly constructive.
This book is out of print, but it is still available through libraries and by special order through on-line sources like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I managed to find it at my local library. The author is a Hodgkin's survivor, and he writes the only book to my knowledge that deals specifically with issues relevant to Hodgkin's survivors. I wish I had read it as soon as I was diagnosed. It should be required reading for all Hodgkin's patients.
The authors of this book are both cancer surivors who offer their tips on moving past the cancer experience. Their individual writing styles are quite different, which comes across because they traded off on writing various chapters. I found the first author's writing touched me more deeply, but there were aspects of both their insights that I found helpful. I know of other cancer survivors who found this book more moving than I did, but I still recommend it as an immensely useful resource for making the transition from surviving treatment to attempting to live life again.
This book is unlike any other I have read. The author is a Jungian analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry. To quote the book jacket, she "weaves myth, experience, and story to produce a book which at once illuminates the experience of the seriously ill patient and shows that facing one's mortality can be a life-transforming, and even a life-saving process". I heard the author speak at a lecture in Vancouver, and her use of classical myth as an allegory for illness is quite effective. My friend Russell borrowed this book from me a few weeks before he died from cancer, and in a written note he described it as "the right book at the right time".
The author is an articulate ecological biologist who is herself a cancer survivor. My eyes were tempted to gloss over the pages and pages of statistics, but I resisted the urge and instead forced myself to digest the haunting truth standing behind each of the seemingly endless reports and case-studies representing scores of individuals who have traversed the cancer ordeal before me. I thought of the author, poring over her keyboard, obsessed with what seemed to be a morose subject matter, but I became relentlessly engrossed in the gravity of her cause. In her book (and on her lecture circuit -- I missed her Vancouver appearance since it fell on a night when I had just had chemo) she highlights environmental and industrial travesties, and she argues that we as a species are vastly contributing to our own high rates of cancer incidence.
This medical doctor initiated a body of research, intending to debunk the notion that psychosocial interventions (like support groups) could prolong the lives of cancer patients. He placed a large number of women with metastic breast cancer into to two groups. One group received conventional care (chemotherapy, radiation and/or surgery) while the other group additionally attended a year of weekly support groups where feelings, fears, and such could be discussed in an open forum with the supervision of social workers and therapists (who were themselves breast cancer survivors). When Dr. Spiegel examined the data five years later, he was astounded to discover that those patients who had attended the support groups had lived an average of twice as long as the control group that had not attended the meetings. In fact, all of the women who had not attended the groups were dead by that time; the only survivors were the support group participants. Further work building on this body of research has since been conducted. The overwhelming lesson is not just that social factors make a resounding difference in the quality of life of people living with cancer, but that it can also make a difference in survival rates. The field of "psychoneuroimmunology" is a burgeoning field in medicine which investigates and documents links between our bodies' disease fighting abilities and psycho-social influences.
Into Thin Air is a personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest which cost many people their lives, in spite of the fact that most were very experienced climbers. The well-written and emotion-packed book kept my undivided attention and caused me to weep repeatedly. I felt saddened that the author remains guilt-ridden, to this day, for failing to somehow avert deaths that were clearly beyond his control. My view is that each individual on that mountain was there by free-will and in full knowledge of the risks inherent. I am deeply dismayed that Mr. Krakauer's conscience still remains burdened by an outcome beyond his personal control.
I think I am fortunate to have read this book at this particular time in my life. Having spent the last year and a half battling cancer, having endured a bone marrow transplant which brought me within a breath of my life, and having spent all my days since that February transplant trying to overcome one difficult complication after another, I have gained some perspective. I am still in pain; I am unable to keep my head erect without the aid of a brace; I cry regularly -- tears of self-pity and tears in fear of an unknown future. But I have this moment ... I am lucky to have at my fingertips countless conveniences that enhance my quality of life. I have my full mental capacities, and I am unencumbered by obsessions like what must have magnetically pulled many victims of that May 1996 Everest storm towards the summit. I am surrounded by loved ones like my mother, brother, husband, and numerous friends. And I have the cherished memory of a loving father. All in all, I am very lucky, and my life is happy.
Although I know I will never climb Mount Everest myself, perhaps each of us metaphorically climbs a mountain at some point in our lives. Sometimes I wonder whether I have reached the summit, or whether bigger challenges still lie ahead. That uncertainty will remain with me for the rest of my days, so instead of worrying and wondering, I must try to tread lightly on this earth, doing as little harm as possible, and hopefully bringing a little sunshine into each day for myself and others.
This book describes acts of kindness various people have witnessed, conducted, or imagined. One could take inspiration from this book and discover small ways to touch the lives of others. I have heard that when this book became a bestseller, it became common for drivers on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to anonymously pay the toll for the driver in the car behind them. I loved reading this book because it contained amazing stories of generosity; many of the stories even brought tears to my eyes. It's an easy book to read because the individual entries are short yet heart-warming.
This book reveals safe alternatives to commonly-prescribed hormone replacement drugs like Provera and Premarin. The relative benefits of truly-plant-derived hormones are carefully explained, and specific alternatives most suited to different personal situations are provided. I found the book interesting and easy to follow. I read it cover-to-cover within 24 hours! The authors provide helpful advice to help women approach their doctors about this important topic. (Most doctors are quite firm in their beliefs about the effectiveness of existing brand-name synthetic drugs available on the market.)
The author of this book is well known for his work revealing the importance of natural progesterone (as opposed to sythetic forms found in drugs like Provera) for women experiencing menopause. He provides scientific references to support many of his claims in addition to offering anecdotes from his own 30-plus years of clinical experience. After reading this book I had a clear understanding of the way hormones work in my body, and I better understood the basic reasoning which supports the use of natural hormones over synthetic.
In spite of having already read a few hormone books, I found this one quite helpful. Armed with the confidence of knowing I want to take natural hormones, this book helped me sort through options. The author, being an M.D., has a slant that is somewhat more accepting of pharmaceutical drugs (than authors of the other two hormone books I have read), but I still found her presentation of facts and information to be fairly unbiased. I still find myself searching for specific information on obtaining prescriptions for natural hormones (mixed in-house by compounding pharmacies). That is, I still don't have a clear idea of the appropriate doses to take, to make a specific natural hormone prescription equivalent in efficacy to a synthetic hormone prescription. But with a little more digging I should find the answers I seek.
I read this book after seeing the 5-part TV series of the same name. Bill Moyers is a well known journalist who travelled the world speaking with various experts, doctors, patients, and laypersons trying to get a better understanding of the connection between mind and body, particularly with respect to the healing process. The TV series was educational and worth viewing; the book is an excellent companion. Of particular interest for me were the sections that contained interviews with the people that run the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, for these retreats were the inspriation that Callanish Healing Retreats that have been an important part of my own healing journey. One of the individuals interviewed is Rachel Naomi Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom.
In 30 brief chapters based in Buddhist philosophy, the author demonstrates how to live in the moment, let go of pain, practice Metta meditation, face mortality, and so much more. This book can help a person gain awareness of his or her true self, a claim on which I haven't seen a lot of other books successfully follow through.
The author of this book is well known for her work in helping individuals learn techniques for relaxation and meditation. She offers tips for utilizing the mind and body to alleviate pain, strengthen the immune system, and achieve a sense of well-being. I found this book to be an approachable guide to helping me help myself.
My friend Laura gave me this book while I was in the hospital for the bone marrow transplant. I didn't get around to reading it, my first-ever Grisham novel, until now. To my surprise, the story revolves around a lawyer representing a leukemia patient who was denied a life-saving bone marrow transplant by his insurance company. (I am sure Laura told me at the time she gave me the book, but facts weren't sticking in my mind so well back then.) Although the book seemed a little "cookie cutter", I enjoyed the plot, and even stayed up late to finish the last quarter of the book in one sitting.
What a powerful book. The main character, Ava, is HIV-positive. She spends the summer living in her old hometown, renewing her friendship with her sister, finding new love, and exploring questions of mortality. As I read, my emotions were all over my face (tears, a smile) to the point that Mark would often notice and comment.
One of my all-time favorite books is The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, so I was excited to get my hands on Carol Shields' next book, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I didn't find the book as intriguing as The Stone Diaries, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. The main character, Larry, finds himself as a young adult in college studying floral arts, due in part to the interference of his mother and in part to happenstance. Larry later discovers as a honeymooning newlywed that he harbours a fascination with garden mazes, and he eventually becomes a successful landscape consultant with an unusual specialty in creating outdoor topiary labyrinths. For me his maze designs stood as a metaphor for his own life, and Larry often wandered blindly through his own life the way one might get lost in a maze. It was exhilarating to be privy to Larry's thoughts as he came to new realizations about himself and floundered his way through mistake after mistake.
I continue to be a big fan of Carol Shields. I have even read a play she wrote ages ago, "Thirteen Hands," and I have seen it performed live here in Vancouver.
Having heard a lot about the high quality of the book Angela's Ashes, I was surprised to find it climbing the bestseller charts in the non-fiction category. This darkly poetic book has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It is the story of Frank McCourt's own family when he was a child. He and his three surviving brothers scavenge and scrape to stay alive, along with their woeful mother and alcoholic father. Two other brothers and a sister die in the midst of hunger and disease in war-era Ireland. The poverty and malaise shocked me. McCourt manages to effectively and poignantly narrate the happenings in the voice of a boy who matures in the face of adversity. On the surface, the book isn't funny or uplifting, yet I found it enjoyable to read nonetheless, surely an indication of the author's skill and grace.
This novel, a bestseller in Canada and internationally, is a winner of the Booker prize. The writing is lyrically poetic and dense with detail, but initially I had a bit of trouble maintaining interest. About halfway through, the characters and events had been woven together in a manner that craftily captivated my attention, causing me to read the remainder of the book at a feverish pace. It's funny how that works. If I had less time on my hands, I might have given up reading too early to realize the quality of the writing.
The story is mostly set in India, and it revolves around two seven-year-old non-identical twins and their extended family. The stark observations and playful dialogue of children are often depicted in a sing-song fashion, sometimes obscuring fact momentarily (or at least bringing to light the differences between adult and child perception of reality). The plot is at times startling and heart-wrenching; this is not light reading. All in all I was very satisfied by the book. I think someday I might even enjoy reading it again.
As much as I enjoyed this book (especially after I got to the point where I couldn't put it down -- about half-way through), I don't think it was quite as well written as some of the Canadian and Irish fiction I have read recently. I found the character development wasn't as deep and the storyline wasn't as intense as I have become accustomed to. But it was a wonderfully engrossing book all the same.
The storyline follows a woman, March, who returns to the town where she grew up, bringing her daughter with her. She faces people and issues she left behind years ago, and she becomes enchanted with a man she never got over, forgetting her husband back home in the process. Her daughter also forms relationships in the town, mirroring those from her mother's childhood. The resolution to conflicts in the story are ingenious and heartfelt. All in all, I enjoyed reading this book.
I have always been a fan of Margaret Atwood's books, and this most recently published book of hers was no disappointment to me. The story is based on the true story of a young Canadian woman accused of a double murder in the nineteenth century. The riveting story and the convincingly developed characters were woven together in a fashion that made for suspence and intrigue. I would highly recommend this novel.
This book has been a bestseller in Canada, and its first-time author has been the recipient of many awards. The epic story takes place on Cape Breton Island, on Canada's east coast. I found the characters to be very rich; at different points in the book I felt like I was witness to different characters' privy thoughts (but not to the point that crucial secrets were divulged). There were twists in the plot right up to the end of the book. I found myself in deep thought about the multi-generational saga for hours after I had finished reading. In fact I had to resist drawing out the family tree! I highly recommend this 566 page book.
This is perhaps the best work of fiction I have read since reading Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries. The author is Canadian, and she writes about a year in the life of a 14 year old girl who lives on a farm outside a small BC town during the Second World War. The tale is raw and dark at times, delving into painful family issues, but the book is weaved together with a great deal of texture. I really loved reading it!
This book is by an Irish author, so the texture was a little unfamiliar to me at first. Words like "eejit" (idiot) and "gaol" (jail?) took me some time to get used to. The tempo of the story was a bit unfamiliar as well, but by the time I got involved with the characters, it was hard for me to put this book down. Most of the story took place in a small oceanside town called Castlebay during the 50's and early 60's, and the tale started with most of the main characters as youngsters, focusing mostly on an intelligent and ambitious female named Clare O'Brien. The story followed all of them as they grew up, some leaving Castlebay, and found their paths crossing again (either in Dublin or back in Castlebay). I will definitely read more books by this author, as I found this one riveting and very entertaining. Another book by this author, "Circle of Friends", was turned into the popular movie starring Minnie Driver.
This book, like many I have read lately, features a female protagonist who faces difficult issues on her journey through childhood and early adulthood. In this book, young Delores Price deals with her significant troubles by eating, which brings on even greater troubles. She grows up haunted by secrets from her past, ultimately living a life based on lies and omitted facts. In spite of its seemingly serious content, this was an amusing novel, perhaps because so many of the characters were exaggerated and borderline implausible. The author is American, and this first-time novel of his is a #1 New York Times Bestseller as well as a selection for Oprah's Book Club. I truly enjoyed reading it.
This book is a timeless work of art. I did not realize it was written many decades ago until I finished the last page and read the author's biography (clueing in simultaneously to her well-established historical prominence). She wrote with grace and clarity. In spite of a full family life, she managed to find pockets of time for solitude and reflection. I took inspiration from her profound insights, written during extended and meaningful excursions to the beach.