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Reviewed by Sian Coppard (31 at diagnosis, now 34)
Many books about breast cancer focus on older women, but here is a book that gives younger women important information about issues affecting women diagnosed before the age of about 40.
Full of personal stories of younger women, this book covers every experience from loss of fertility to raising young children during treatment, to coping with metastatic cancer at a young age when most of their healthy peers are looking forward to a career, marriage or starting a family.
There are informative chapters on screening tools, diagnosis, biopsies, understanding pathology reports, types of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal treatment, nutrition and complementary therapies. These are of relevance to women of any age. However, it mentions that screening tools are currently inadequate for younger women because their breast tissue tends to be denser, that the effectiveness of hormonal treatment may differ from older women and that more research is needed in these areas.
The issues of fertility, pregnancy and bringing up young children while having treatment are of particular relevance to younger women. These are discussed in-depth while other books barely give these subjects a mention. Also poorly covered in some books are recurrence and metastases. Women with these diagnoses are often invisible and a lot of books give only basic information. The chapter on these issues is powerful in that is uses many personal stories to give women with a recurrence a voice.
I highly recommend this book to any young woman.
Reviewed by Sian Coppard (31 at diagnosis, now 34)
Many books about breast cancer focus on older women, but here is a book that gives younger women important information about issues affecting women diagnosed before the age of about 40.
Full of personal stories of younger women, this book covers every experience from loss of fertility to raising young children during treatment, to coping with metastatic cancer at a young age when most of their healthy peers are looking forward to a career, marriage or starting a family.
There are informative chapters on screening tools, diagnosis, biopsies, understanding pathology reports, types of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal treatment, nutrition and complementary therapies. These are of relevance to women of any age. However, it mentions that screening tools are currently inadequate for younger women because their breast tissue tends to be denser, that the effectiveness of hormonal treatment may differ from older women and that more research is needed in these areas.
The issues of fertility, pregnancy and bringing up young children while having treatment are of particular relevance to younger women. These are discussed in-depth while other books barely give these subjects a mention. Also poorly covered in some books are recurrence and metastases. Women with these diagnoses are often invisible and a lot of books give only basic information. The chapter on these issues is powerful in that is uses many personal stories to give women with a recurrence a voice.
I highly recommend this book to any young woman.
First printed UPFRONT issue 53
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