The Topic of Cancer

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The Topic of Cancer

Postby Judith » Tue Mar 25, 2014 6:51 pm

The Topic of Cancer
(Ed Jonathan Burke, Karnac 2012)

The subtitle of this book is ‘new perspectives on the emotional experience of cancer’- in the Foreword the book is described as being ‘truly outstanding and moving’—here we have psychoanalytic practitioners as well as a rabbi and a journalist bringing their own perspectives:

There is a good chapter by poet Carole Satyamurti on Creativity after Diagnosis (which is the name of one of our own forums) and as Anne Karpf (the journalist) says ‘confessional writing about cancer has even spread to the stand-up routine’...(cue our Laughter as Medicine Forum).

There is much emphasis on professionals helping people preparing for death rather than living with cancer & after cancer diagnosis maybe for many years—as many of us hope to do.
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This is of course important work that these professionals are doing. The rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg is particularly sensitive and it’s worth knowing that this book (with its catchy title harking back to Henry Miller’s rather different ‘Tropic of Cancer’...) is out there if you want to read it any time.
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Re: The Topic of Cancer- two more books....

Postby Judith » Sun Nov 23, 2014 5:59 pm

Here is an excellent review of current research on ‘cracking the code’knowledge is power, and as we know this site sells nothing except self-empowerment- if you’ve got further comments on this or any other subject raised in this debate, please add them-thank you...

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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/n ... t-cracked-

the-cancer-code-by-sue-armstrong-review#comment-44065056
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And here is another one: I have been asking a colleague to write a review of this, but he is very pressed for time,(it is now on the site- Feb 2015- see separate post)- SO - here is an excellent review from the internet:Thank you Kenneth E MacWilliams....

And we at http://www.cansurviving.com would like to add, there seems to be nothing here about other ways beyond the 'conventional' of exploring the healing process? That is what our site does, and what more and more people are doing so effectively...But read on and make up your own mind...

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Guardian First Book Award)
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You remember the scene in the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? From the top of the bluff looking into the distance at dusk, Butch sees the lights of the pursuing posse which doesn't stop tracking them even at night and says "How many are following us? They're beginning to get on my nerves. Who are those guys?" In the same threatening way cancers have been dogging human beings since the dawn of time, and although we now know quite a lot about cancer we still don't really know "who are those guys" or how to shake them. And they sure are "beginning to get on our nerves" as Butch said.

Almost one out of four of us will eventually wrestle with cancer -- the defining illness of our generation -- and lose our lives in the process. Until it catches up with us most of us will try to ignore this fact, just as when we were very young children alone in our bedroom trying to go to sleep at night we tried to ignore the monster that we sometimes feared might be lurking in our bedroom closet.

Enter oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee who almost parentally takes us by the hand to give us the courage to open with him the door to that dark and foreboding closet in order to see what is really lurking inside. Since eventually most of us are going to have to wrestle with this monster anyway -- either as a victim or as a loved one of a victim -- looking intelligently and closely into that dark closet does diminish fear and enhance wise perspective. And on this incredible journey into the depths of that darkness, what an absolutely marvelous guide is this modern day Virgil called Siddharta Mukherjee as he leads us on this long and often harrowing journey through the swathe that cancer has cut through mankind throughout time.

Mukherjee is a veritable kaleidoscope.
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Turn his writing one way and you experience him as an exciting writer of page-turning detective stories or mystery stories; turn him another and he's a highly effective communicator of cellular biology; turn him a third and you get superb science writing; turn him a fourth and he has the grandeur and broad sweep of an excellent historian. It's hard to believe that this one book, combining all of these appealing characteristics, is the work of just one man. And underlying it all is his sterling medical training and credentials which have been enumerated often elsewhere.

The book itself is a tour de force. It is the first book of such extraordinary scope regarding cancer. Its architectural structure brings to mind Melville's Moby Dick and how effectively and artfully Melville braided together the three strands of his great classic: a grand adventure story, the technology of whaling, and a treatise of humanity and philosophy. Equally effectively does Mukherjee weave together all the various facets of this iconic disease throughout history, from describing cancer from the patient's perspective, to viewing the never ending battles of physicians and medical researchers with cancer over the centuries, to examining the mysteries of the cellular nature of cancer itself and what really goes on in there, to the pro and con impact of this never ending plague on the spirit of the individual human and on our race as a whole, to peering into a crystal ball for a glance of cancer's and our future together. While doing all of this the alchemy of Mukherjee's writing continually turns science into poetry and poetry into science.

Simply put, it is so good, and so incandescently clear and lucid, and so powerful, and so engrossing, and so easily consumed that you will not lay it down without someone or circumstances forcing you to.

Had I read this book in my teens I would have found my life's career. I can only imagine that while you are reading this book, somewhere there will be some very young teenage girl or boy who will also be reading it at the same time you are, and who will become totally hooked by this book just as you will be, and who will go on to make a career in cancer research, a career that might provide the breakthrough that humanity has been searching and hoping for all of these many centuries. Thus although you will never know it, you will have "been there" at the initial motivation of that person and thus indirectly present at the earliest genesis of the eventual great idea.

This book has THAT potential. It is THAT good.
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Kenneth E. MacWilliams
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