Do you still have cleavage with just one breast? A model of emotional openess

Review of Do you still have cleavage with just one breast?

What to do, feel, manage?  36-years-old, 3 months pregnant, on a break from her PhD research in Israel, Sue Lawrence found a lump in her breast on her honeymoon.  The lump turned out to be breast cancer.  She lost the breast and kept the baby.  Advised to start chemotherapy as her pregnancy progressed, Sue delivered Elona prematurely, her body’s reaction to the impact of treatment.  Sue’s response to her experiences as a newly wed, new mom, and breast cancer patient was recorded in her journal over an 8-year period.  “Raw” and “unedited,” it is the meat of her book.
 
Because of who she is, Sue’s account is a roller coaster that rides the rails of all the emotions she experienced over the 8 years of treatment and rediscovery of herself.  She mentions many issues that confront cancer “warriors:”  The interruption of career and livelihood, the loss of her own dreams of how motherhood would begin, dramatic physical changes, the inability of others to understand her struggles, the loss of “innocence of living invincibly,” and, at times, a sense of profound neediness.  Moving from shock to self-pity to triumph, the odyssey described in the book will help other breast cancer patients anticipate, accept, and manage their own struggles.  As a model of emotional openness, Do You Still Have Cleavage invites its readers to allow their own emotional reactions to breast cancer to flow and ebb.

Helen Stein, PhD
beSurgeryWise.com