Helping Your Mate Face Breast Cancer: Tips for Becoming an Effective Support Partner for the One You Love During the Breast Cancer Experience [Paperback]

Judy C. Kneece (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2001

This book is designed for mates of breast cancer patients to help them face the changes and challenges of meeting the vast support needs of the patient and themselves. The book provides guidance in the areas of:

*dealing with the emotional pain of a mate's diagnosis
*understanding how to help the patient cope
*talking with the children
*understanding breast cancer and treatment options
*dealing with insurance and financial issues
*what to do the night before and after surgery
*what to say about her scar and body image
*dealing with the side-effects of treatment
*protecting the sexual relationship
*monitoring her emotional recovery
*managing the fear of recurrence
*how to take care of your own needs
*and much more!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book needs to be available when the word cancer is spoken. It helped me to know my partner's reactions were normal...and so were my responses. This guide gives direction to support partners struggling to understand their new role of support. It shows that senitive and caring people can come through this and emerge with an even greater and deeper love for each other. This book meets a real need." -- Rev. Sinclair E. Lewis, M.Div, D.D., Methodist Pastor, Support Partner

About the Author

Judy C. Kneece, RN, OCN is a certified oncology nurse with a specialty in breast cancer and a Mammacare specialist. She presently serves hospitals and breast health centers as an international Breast Health Consultant in the educational and psychosocial needs of breast cancer patients and their families. She implements a program of comprehensive education, training nurses to fill the breast health education role and setting up a complete program of support for the entire family unit. Judy also trains nurses, physicians and mammography technologists in the management of breast disease.

Judy is the author of Your Breast Cancer Treatment Handbook, a patient's guide through the breast cancer experience. She is also the author of Finding a Lump In Your Breast-Where To Go..What To Do, Solving The Mystery of Breast Pain and Solving The Mystery of Breast Discharge. Judy has developed a computer program featuring 236 patient teaching sheets on breast health for clinics, hospitals and physicians' offices.

She presently serves as Secretary for the National Consortium of Breast Centers and as Managing editor for their national newsletter, The Breast Center Bulletin. She has published over 30 national articles on breast health, and is a contributing editor for several national magazines on breast health and breast care.

Judy speaks widely on the topic of breast cancer education and triumphant survivorship as a keynote and conference speaker.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Edu Care Inc; 4th Revised edition (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886665117
• ISBN-13: 978-1886665118
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Judy C. Kneece is the president of EduCare and a certified oncology nurse with a specialty in breast cancer. She was working as an acute care oncology nurse when she first observed the multitude of challenges faced by breast cancer patients. In 1991, inspired by these patients' courage and spirit, and her personal experience with a family member battling breast cancer, Judy made the decision to devote her life to changing the way healthcare is provided to breast cancer patients.

Shortly after making her decision, Judy was given the opportunity to start a program of support for breast cancer patients in her hospital. She saw that a breast cancer diagnosis was more than a medical challenge for a patient-it also presented social and personal challenges that were rarely addressed, and which could significantly impede a patient's recovery. Knowing that women needed more than medical treatment to arrive at recovery emotionally intact, Judy developed a program that addressed patients' emotional and social issues, in addition to providing medical education and navigation of the patient throughout the continuum of care.

After gaining national attention for her program's success with patients and administrators, Judy wanted to help other facilities develop their own program. In 1994, with a passion in her heart and a small inheritance used for start-up funds, Judy began EduCare Inc. as a breast health training and publishing company. Over the past fifteen years, EduCare has been a pioneer in developing patient education, educational materials and healthcare professional training. Judy continues to be an advocate for change in breast care, knowing that her voice echoes the pleas of thousands of women and men diagnosed yearly for improved education and support.

Since 1994, more than 2,000 nurses have completed the EduCare Breast Health Navigator course preparing them to educate, support, and successfully navigate patients and training them to implement interdisciplinary care conferences for physicians in their facility.

Because comprehensive breast health centers and patient navigation were new concepts, Judy began teaching national Strategic Planning workshops for breast center administrators. Her complete "how-to" center guide has allowed more than 500 hospitals to implement comprehensive breast programs incorporating the nurse for patient navigation and to start interdisciplinary care patient conferences.

To understand the real needs of patients, Judy conducted national focus groups allowing patients to share their experiences. The information gleaned from the groups helped advance the development of materials and services to better serve patients with recurrence and sexuality issues after chemotherapy. The first focus groups, held in 9 facilities nationwide during 2000, were on recurrent breast cancer. In 2001, they were followed by groups in 11 facilities nationwide that focused on sexuality after chemotherapy. The survey data has been shared with other organizations to help them improve services.

EduCare has developed the COPE Library: Breast Health Edition, which consists of over 400 topics, allowing nurses and doctors to deliver symptom-specific education efficiently. Each topic is customized with the facility's name and contact information and can be printed on-demand from the healthcare provider's own computer.

Professionally, Judy has published five books, The Breast Cancer Treatment Handbook (7th Edition), Breast Cancer Support Partner Handbook (7th Edition), Finding A Lump in Your Breast, Solving The Mystery of Breast Pain and Solving The Mystery of Breast Discharge. Training manuals include The Breast Health Navigator Manual, The Comprehensive Breast Center Strategic Planning Manual and Breast Center Design.

EduCare continues to have their hand on the pulse of patients and navigators, sensing their needs and developing tools to meet the ever changing challenges of breast health care delivery. All educational materials are kept up-to-date and cover current treatment issues. The products are designed to be educational and do not offer treatment advice, only explanations allowing allowing the healthcare provider to be the guiding force in care delivery.

Judy has published over 40 articles in national publications about patient-focused care, breast cancer navigation, survivorship and comprehensive breast center development. She served as Administrative Radiology Journal Breast Health Editor during 1995-1996. She also served as secretary and was on the Advisory Board for the National Consortium of Breast Centers. She presently serves on the American College of Surgeons' National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) on the Education Committee and on the Advisory Board for the national Clinical Breast Care Project for Windber/Walter Reed Medical Center.

In May of 2007, Judy was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Charleston Southern University for her outstanding work and contributions to improve cancer care delivery.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very helpful book for a most difficult time in ones life., October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Helping Your Mate Face Breast Cancer: Tips for Becoming an Effective Support Partner for the One You Love During the Breast Cancer Experience (Paperback)

Most helpful in giving insight to how feelings may run during the healing process. Good tips on things not to say. Excellent explanation of different types of cancers. Explains very well some of the decisions that will need to be made by the cancer patient.

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, August 25, 2011

By 

Karen's Kindle - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Helping Your Mate Face Breast Cancer: Tips for Becoming an Effective Support Partner for the One You Love During the Breast Cancer Experience (Paperback)

I bought this book for my husband on the recommendation of my cancer surgeon. My husband chose to wait and read this while I was in surgery having my double mastectomy and reconstruction back in Feb 2011. I think this book is terrific as it helps a spouse understand the whole process and how to best lend support. Now that I'm almost at the end of the process I can say this book was a terrific help as my husband was very supportive . I'd highly suggest it to others.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative and Comforting, October 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Helping Your Mate Face Breast Cancer: Tips for Becoming an Effective Support Partner for the One You Love During the Breast Cancer Experience (Paperback)

In a state of shock and full of fear...this book provided the answers I was looking for and put me at ease.