Cancer Happens - Coming of Age with Cancer (Hardcover, 1st ed)

Most cancer books deal with patients who are children or seniors, or mature women with breast cancer. Rebecca Gifford was stricken as a young adult, fresh out of college and eager to begin an exciting new job. Initially she asked her doctor about the back spasms she had been having. Two months later, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin??'s lymphoma. During the next two years, Rebecca endured chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, the loss of her independence, and the collapse of her budding career. In this honest and probing memoir, Rebecca tells it like it was - from hair loss to confinement, therapy groups, lack of sex, funerals, morphine, premature menopause, professional humiliation, and much, much more. She explores the wide range of emotions many cancer patients deny like anger, defiance, and vanity and openly shares the ordeal of living through cancer. In this illuminating look at the uncensored thoughts and feelings of an average person fighting an extraordinary struggle, Rebecca tells the reader in no uncertain terms what cancer did to her and for her.