My Breast

Rating:
Summary: A dress rehearsal for laughing about dying
Review: This is a book about an upsetting subject that will cheer you up. I read it while in the throes of treatment for a completely different but also grisly medical problem. It took my mind so completely off my own situation that when I was undressing for bed later I looked down and was quite astonished to see no scar on my breast. At the same time it also addressed my own feelings in a way none of my doctors did. It helped so much to see that someone who is smart, nice and funny can be hit with a medical problem that is stupid, obnoxious and fundamentally unamusing. Maybe I too can be okay even though I'm not okay. The thought of dying really doesn't kill your own sense of the humor and poetry that lurks in hospital corridors, but it's isolating to discover that trying to share the lighter moments with others will only upset them. So it was a relief to be able to join the cocktail party in Wadler's mind -- this book reads like Nora Ephron (``Heartburn'') getting sick instead of divorced. If you've been there, you'll understand why I laughed to read Wadler's wry comment on doctors who disagreed about how to save her life: ``Great, I think, duelling doctors. I suppose it's why people get second opinions, but it's not doing a lot for my confidence about the profession.'' Even if you haven't, you'll close this book feeling glad to have joined Wadler's ``dress rehearsal for dying.''

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anyone going down the cancer path
Review: This is not a psycho-babble, how-to-cope book nor is it a dry,dull medical book chock-a-block with technoterms. Instead,it is a funny insiders travelogue that makes anyone feel like they are not alone. My mother took it with her anywhere and often referred to the author as "my funny friend in New York."