Survivor (eBook)

Taking Control of Your Fight Against Cancer

Laura Landro (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

1999 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-0-684-86790-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Shortly after her thirty-seventh birthday, Wall Street Journal reporter and editor Laura Landro was told that she had chronic myelogenous leukemia. Survivor is the remarkable account of her battle against this devastating, potentially fatal cancer -- and her successful struggle to take control of her own case. At first almost paralyzed with fear when diagnosed with this form of blood cancer, Laura Landro resolved to use her journalistic training to seek out the treatment that would give her the best shot at surviving. Noting that most Americans spend more time researching what kind of car to buy than they do their health care, she shows how and why all patients can -- and must -- arm themselves with the facts, learn to understand medical jargon, get doctors to answer all their questions in layman's terms, weigh conflicting medical opinions, and make the difficult choice among the options open to them. Survivor is a moving, deeply personal account of a life-and-death experience. In it, Laura Landro tells of a fight to live that brought her to the brink of death -- and to a despair that at times made her wonder if the struggle was worth it. Her inspiring story offers all readers hope and the know-how to navigate the terrifying and bewildering world of medicine, even when they are very ill and at their most vulnerable. Laura Landro has written a book that is must reading for everyone who has been diagnosed with cancer, and for everyone who has a cancer patient in the family. It will rank beside such classics as Norman Cousins's Anatomy Of an Illnes As Perceived by the Patient, Cornelius Ryan's A Private Battle, and John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud, at once a work of literature and a manifesto for every cancer patient.

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INTRODUCTION

The day you learn you have cancer or any life-threatening illness, you cross over into a parallel universe, a world that separates you from everyone else except those who have been through the same thing. If you are one of the unlucky ones, it will hit when you least expect it, probably at the prime of your life, when you are at the top of your game, reaching the pinnacle of your career. It won't care. No amount of money or success can stop it. The fact that you've just had a child, or fallen in love, or gotten a big promotion, or landed a new client won't matter, either.

There may have been something you could have done to prevent it, like stopping smoking or finding a job that didn't expose you to toxic substances. But more likely than not, the disease was mapped into your genes from birth or triggered by something you couldn't have avoided. There's no use trying to figure out why you, why now. Questions are irrelevant, because it won't wait for answers.

I learned all this seven years ago, when it happened to me, when I learned I had leukemia. There are no precise statistics on how many others go through the same thing each year and new cancer cases declined for the first time in 1997. But the American Cancer Society recently estimated that there will be 1.23 million new cases of cancer diagnosed in 1998 alone. Though the chances of developing some form of cancer increase with age, it is the young and middle-aged who have the most to lose. According to recent research done by the cancer group, one out of every sixty men and one of every fifty-two women developed an invasive cancer by the age of thirty-nine. But between the ages of forty and fifty-nine, a time many view as the prime of fife, that number leapt to one in every twelve men and one in every eleven women. Fortunately, overall cancer deaths are declining, you want to do what you can to be on the decline curve of those statistics.

I was trained as a journalist, so digging up facts and statistics and reporting on my disease and its treatment came easily to me. But you don't have to be an investigative reporter in order to learn all you can about something that threatens to destroy you, and then intelligently analyze your options for treatment. Even the august New York Times recently declared that this is the age of the self-educated patient. For while science has made huge strides in early detection and treatment of cancer, and in the end, of course, you must rely on medical experts to treat your disease, it does not mean you must or should simply abrogate your responsibility and leave the decisions to doctors and hospitals.

A woman who once called me for advice after being diagnosed with cancer asked me in frightened tones, 'But how could you tell the doctors you didn't trust their opinions? What if they got mad at you and didn't want to help you?' She seemed amazed at the idea that you could simply fire a doctor who wasn't giving you the answers you needed or the attention and care you deserved. But you can do exactly that.

Americans are great consumers -- we know how to get information on the best new car, the best mutual fund, the best college for our kids. Think of health care the same way, and you won't be as daunted. The key to survival is taking control, learning everything you can about your treatment, making informed decisions, and being prepared to fight if necessary: for the right care, the right doctors, and in the end, for your own life. Had I not done this, I might not be alive today.

As unlucky as I was to have cancer at a young age, I know I was fortunate in almost every other way. I had a loving, supremely functional family and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.7.1999
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Krankheiten / Heilverfahren
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Naturheilkunde
• ISBN-10: 0-684-86790-7 / 0684867907
• ISBN-13: 978-0-684-86790-8 / 9780684867908