My Breast

Rating:
Summary: Totally readable.
Review: "The surgeon took it out using a local, and when he was done, I asked to see it. It was the size of a robin's egg, with the gray brain-like matter which give it its name, medullary cancer. It rested in the middle of a larger ball of pink and white breast tissue, sliced down the center like a hard-boiled egg...and I looked at it hard, trying to figure it out. We did not know it was cancer until twenty minutes later, when they had almost finished stitching me up and the pathology report came back, and then I was especially glad I had looked. Mano a mano, eyeball to eyeball. This is a modern story. Me and my cancer. I won."

Any book that starts off this way has got to be a terrific read and this one is. A sharp-eyed, witty, chin-up personal account by a journalist who keeps it close to home but happens to be a great mediator of the graphic details and the medical context. Not many breast cancer patients will be lucky enough to have the rare, unaggressive medullary form that Joyce Wadler thought she had, but even she had her diagnosis hedged later in the game and thus underwent the full round of surgery, radiation and chemo. Will appeal to: All breast cancer readers, well or ill.

Rating:
Summary: Harrowing And Humorous
Review: Published in 1992, Ms. Wadler's story is engrossing, and especially interesting when she sticks to her cancer and its treatments, instead of digressing into descriptions of her rather flaky relationships with three, on-again, off-again boyfriends. Based on the author's upbeat yet realistic attitude, and the fact that she had an apparently slow-growing, "good" type of malignancy--medullary cancer--I would suppose that she is alive and thriving today.

"My Breast" is a fast read, and one that would be particularly appropriate for anyone who has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. The more frightening aspects of Ms. Wadler's diagnosis and treatment are well balanced by her sense of humor and positive attitude.