Customer Reviews

After Cancer: A Guide to Your New Life

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I believe that only cancer survivors can make a pertinent review this book.

I strongly recommend it to anyone who is a cancer survivor, or anybody who wants to try to understand a friend or relative who has had cancer.

The author, Wendy Harpham, is a cancer survivor. She is also a medical doctor. She writes from both perspectives. This makes her book not only informative, but also full of empathy.

It made me cry. It made me laugh. It made me realize that there is "a life after cancer" and that, as Wendy suggests, I can "make it a good one."

This book took on a huge topic: the period after cancer. There is too much in this topic to cover in one book. Dr Harpham did a thorough job with the areas that she focused on. Her question-and-answer format made the book easy to flip through-- it does not require cover-to-cover reading, which is excellent for slow readers like me.

Rather than using dozens of heart-warming examples of survivorship as in other books, Dr Harpham gives the information in a more linear, factual way. This is good for people who don't want gloss but just the straight facts (I personally would have enjoyed more stories and to hear her own voice come through). She touches on many real-life issues that most other books don't address such as radiation-related tooth cavities and risks of potential birth problems in pregnant cancer survivors. For this information alone the book is worth the purchase.

My only issue is that the book sticks with the popular, conventional, let's-not-rock-the-boat approach of the American Cancer Society. Such as when she puts "avoid sun exposure" at the top of a prevention recommendations list, without acknowledging the tremendous cancer-protective effects of vitamin D and the fundamental fact that all life comes from sunlight. Complementary/Alternative medicine is quickly presented with warnings of how dangerous it is, while the horrible toxicities and lethal side effects of conventional medicine are addressed with an assumption of acceptance.

To cover both conventional and CAM topics in one book would make an exceptionally thick book. If you are looking for information beyond the conventional medical model, you would do better with books by Patrick Quillin or Ralph Moss. But if you trust the conventional system, then this book is an excellent resource to get you through the after cancer period.

I found it very helpful to have a resource such as this book by Wendy Harpham when I finished my cancer treatments. The book helped me understand what I was feeling and why. I am now 3 years out and have just finished rereading the book. It has helped me, again, in my "new life" after cancer. I found that the book accurately explained the emotions I had been confronting. I highly recommend the book and believe that her book is a must read for any cancer survivor who has finished treatment, especially if you have just completed treatment, but even if it was years ago.

This book has some very good insight and suggestions for making life easier after chemo. But, with all the new therapies and drugs, this book needs a good update.

Everyone with cancer or loved ones with cancer must read this excellent book! It answers all those thousands of questions you have about what life is like after cancer!

This book is just brilliant, it explains in plain English all about treatment, it tells you what to expect during & afterwards, it is the most honest down to earth, sometimes very witty, most practical thing I have read throughout my illness & recovery. Every Cancer patient should be given this book as they leave the hospital door, it would sure cut down on patients worrying & on doctors time. Thank You.

I purchased two of these books, one for my mother and one for myself as my mother had recently been through a cancer operation and radiation therapy and was given an initial good prognosis going ahead. Her cancer counsellor recommended the book for her to read.

My mother has found the book very helpful in helping her dealing with moving ahead after a life threatening experience. I have found the book helpful in trying to know how to act, what to do and say to assist my mother during her ordeal.

It is a very worthwhile book.

The font Harper Collins selected for her 2nd edition headings, and Contents, as well as the paper selection I received in the soft cover ed. are distractive. I found myself ignoring them.

This book might be more convincing if "my cancer" was used less;it is out of sync with the cut and dry medical model that comprises about 83% of the pages.

Her experience does not touch on the aspects that to begin a new life one must come to recognize that it is NOT a welcomed disease, one must refuse ownership, and it is augmented by our carcinogenic society. It is a journey on which a battle must be fought.

Her answers lack the personal approach that she does possess, and instead revert to the "medical model, hence a change in title might be appropriate. The dichotomy lies in "new life" in the title; Wendy stays away from that through her technique, where the 'meat' of this book in relation to the title is in the incomplete Prologue, which could be expanded to everyone's advantage. For example, why can Wendy "never go back to where I was." If we have medical education - we come to realize, as did this author, that writing is healing (as author Margie Davis writes), but Halpham doesn't acknowledge that a cancer experience levels us all; everyone can hug, cry, hurt, and be helped through involvement. Just as one gets closer to the emotional aspects of the author's journey with cancer and its ramifications, zip, off we go into clinical answers.

I wonder if a non M.D. could have had this book published? Either the editor did not intend the book for the general public, or did not know how to touch the heart of those on this journey.