Literature Annotations
 |
Middlebrook, Christina |
| Genre | Memoir (212 pp.) |
| Keywords | Cancer, Chronic Illness/Chronic Disease, Death and Dying, Family Relationships, Illness and the Family, Illness Narrative/Pathography, Patient Experience, Suffering, Technology, Women's Health |
| Summary | Written by a Jungian psychoanalyst about her own experience with metastatic breast cancer, this memoir is a two year chronicle extending from the day of diagnosis through sequential remissions and relapse, to the remission following stem cell transplant. In the course of this voyage, the author deals with her own fear and anger, the range of responses elicited from family and friends, and her anxiety about the technology and impersonality of the health care system. The book ends, but Middlebrook's story does not. She is feeling well as she recovers from her transplant. She knows she still has a lethal tumor. The only thing she doesn't know is when it will claim her life. |
| Commentary | Written in a matter-of-fact tone that does not attempt to deny the emotional roller-coaster evoked by the diagnosis of Stage IV cancer, this memoir addresses most of the critical issues touching patients and their families caught in this situation. The style is direct, the syntax interesting, and the structure lucid and very readable, stimulating both empathy and admiration for the author and her loved ones. |
| Publisher | Basic |
| Edition | 1996 |
| Place Published | New York |
| Annotated by | Willms, Janice L. |
| Date of Entry | 02/05/97 |
| Last Revised | 11/22/09 |