‘I’m sure chemotherapy also killed my ‘lazy’ gene or ‘sleep’ gene, as well as destroying the tumors. I now can’t do things by halves, can’t sit around doing nothing, can’t waste a moment of this life I managed to save.’ Says the author Chris Geiger who suffered from Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma himself and then went on to create awareness about the same and put forth this book which is a collection of experiences shared by numerous people who emerged victorious in their battle against ‘the
big C’ as many call it in the book or cancer.
Very honestly, the moment I saw this book in Crossword, my first thought was why was this idea of publishing a collection of stories of survival not popular enough? Us humans whenever we feel stuck or helpless or frustrated, we just need to know that there was someone in a similar situation as we are right now and has successfully come out of it. We want a sliver of hope to cling on to and this collection of cancer survivor stories provides just that in a very easy to read format of short stories along with some of the author’s newspaper columns.
As a budding doctor, reading this book really helped me understand the patient’s side of the story and how positive attitude from the doctor’s side plays a significant role in restoring a patient’s faith in their survival and provides them with the much needed strength to fight against cancer.
A notable point that I observed from many stories was that young people particularly are reluctant to get themselves checked out and ignore symptoms in the early stage, because they tend to think that illnesses only happen to old people. People are likely to believe that a negative event won’t happen to them, which is popularly known as the ‘optimism bias’ in
psychology. One of the stories also mentions the Jade Goody effect which caused increased awareness among women regarding screening tests for breast cancer.
Survivors were more grateful and found a new meaning to life after going through various cancer therapies and felt closer to their families and loved ones who formed a very important pillar of support for them throughout! Since the stories were written by survivors themselves starting with how they were told about their diagnosis to how they’re actually doing now after the chemotherapy treatments, they were very raw and heart-touching to read. Bonus points to the author for adding some of his humorous newspaper columns about cancer related risk factors! Dive right in the book for great stories which inspire and take a moment to count your blessings.
