After You Hear It's Cancer
A Guide to Navigating the Difficult Journey Ahead
By (author) John Leifer With Lori Lindstrom Leifer
Publication date:
16 July 2015Length of book:
320 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
234x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781442246256
In 2014, an estimated 1.66 million people will receive a diagnosis of cancer. They will join a pool of 13.7 million Americans already living with a history of cancer. Almost 600,000 Americans will die from cancer. For some, cancer will be only a short divergence. For others, however, it will be a dramatic fork in the road. And for still others, the beginning of the end of the line.
This book guides cancer patients along their journey where no one knows the duration or the destination. Divided into the three parts of being a cancer patient—the diagnosis, initial treatment, and on to survivorship—the book will help the newly diagnosed cancer patient navigate a complex health care system, make astute decisions at difficult junctures, and manage the emotional turbulence that can rock his or her world. Lastly, it shares the story of how the author and his wife, as well as other cancer patients, have confronted their disease.
This book guides cancer patients along their journey where no one knows the duration or the destination. Divided into the three parts of being a cancer patient—the diagnosis, initial treatment, and on to survivorship—the book will help the newly diagnosed cancer patient navigate a complex health care system, make astute decisions at difficult junctures, and manage the emotional turbulence that can rock his or her world. Lastly, it shares the story of how the author and his wife, as well as other cancer patients, have confronted their disease.
A cancer diagnosis marks the beginning of a long, challenging journey through alien territory. Leifer, a health-care administrator and founder of the Leifer Report, has written an informative guidebook for that journey, intended to help patients 'navigate a complex health-care system, feel empowered to make astute decisions at difficult junctures, and manage the emotional turbulence along the way.' Chapters cover choosing doctors, managing pain and side effects, using complementary therapies, surviving cancer, choosing to stop treatment, death and dying, and more. Leifer focuses on information to support decision making, offering lists of questions to ask providers and quotes from research findings and patients and caregivers. He offers information that is balanced and medically sound: for example, he describes a valid role for complementary therapies while condemning quackery. . . . VERDICT Recommended for medically literate cancer patients who want to make well-informed decisions about their treatments.