From Publishers Weekly
In this deeply affecting memoir, Azevedo, a registered nurse and speaker for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, details the years her son spent battling cancer. Andy, the youngest of five children the Azevedos raised on their dairy farm in California, was an outgoing high school student. He loved his friends, his girlfriend, the outdoors and playing football; he anticipated a bright future. In 1988, after an injured finger refused to heal, he was diagnosed with clear cell sarcoma. He remained courageous through it all, but after three years of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, he died. In solemn prose imbued with the alternating clarity and disbelief of grieving, Azevedo traces Andy's struggles to remain upbeat through the highs and lows of treatment. She describes moments of his life that she holds dear, recalls his smile, a childhood tantrum, his best friend's death. She also addresses the lacks of the current system of health insurance: a recommended bone marrow transplant for Andy was not approved by his insurer. (Azevedo's community raised the money, but the transplant never took place, because the cancer had spread too fast.) Azevedo tells how, together, she and Andy traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for health insurance reform, influencing President Clinton's decision to sign a partial reform bill into law. Azevedo is particularly articulate in delineating the abuses of an HMO system that denies treatments that physicians have recommended because they are too expensive. Any parent going through a similar crisis, and any reader concerned about the failures of America's health insurance system, will be greatly moved by the author's memorial to her son. B&w photos.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
The subtitle suggests the major weakness of this highly personal, often emotional book: Azevedo was by no means the only person on teenage Andy's side in his struggle with a fatal cancer. Other family members, friends, health-care providers, and well-wishers all chipped in with psychological and financial assistance as many tests failed to clear up confusion over Andy's diagnosis, and several treatment suggestions were presented. A few doctors and nurses took an impersonal or even antagonistic attitude, especially in the matter of pain control; and the insurance company was really no worse than many such businesses are, which doesn't gainsay Azevedo's observation that "the insurance company is looking at the bottom line, and your child's life is not on it." Azevedo weaves Andy's substantial interest in and ability at high-school football into this nearly day-by-day account of the ups and downs of an intense situation and her own efforts, especially, to control it.
William BeattyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
