{"product_id":"after-breast-cancer-isbn-9780553384253","title":"After Breast Cancer","description":"As women quickly discover, their life when treatment ends is very different from what it was before their diagnosis. Often exhausted, anxious, and emotionally volatile, they are beset by physical discomforts, fearful of intimacy, afraid for their children, worried about recurrence. Anticipating a return to “normalcy,” they discover that the old version of normal no longer applies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere could be no more knowledgeable guide for women embarking on this complicated journey than Hester Hill Schnipper, who is herself both an experienced oncology social worker and a breast cancer survivor. This comprehensive handbook provides jargon-free information on the wide range of practical issues women face as they navigate the journey back to health, including: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•Managing physical problems such as fatigue, hot flashes, and aches and pains\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•Handling relationships: your children, your partner, your parents, your friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•How to regain emotional and sexual intimacy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•Coping with financial and workplace issues\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•Genetic testing: why, whether, when \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•How to move beyond the fear of recurrence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•And much more\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis indispensable book will help you rediscover your capacity for joy as you move forward into the future—as a survivor.\"Although countless books and pamphlets have been written for women recently diagnosed with breast cancer, little exists for women who have finished their treatment. In this volume, readers will find a guide that might help them better understand their infinitely complex circumstances and find hope. —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If my book is the one you buy when you are diagnosed with breast cancer, this one should be the one you purchase as you finish treatment. Schnipper is a terrific guide on the rocky road to recovery. This book will help you transition from the last chemotherapy\/radiation treatment and help you reclaim your life!”  —Susan Love, M.D.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eHester Hill Schnipper, LICSW, brings a unique expertise to her subject: not only her many years as an oncology social worker and the creator of a highly respected support program for women with breast cancer—but also her own experience as a breast cancer survivor. A member of the Oncology Social Work Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, she lives outside Boston with her husband, the distinguished medical oncologist Lowell E. Schnipper, MD.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy Personal Journey\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs hard as it is to remember, there was a before. I had lived for  forty-four years and thought of myself as having been lucky. I had  been a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a lover, and a friend. I  ate right, exercised, got enough sleep, and in general took good care  of myself. I had been working as an oncology social worker for more  than fifteen years and had recently fallen in love with a wonderful  man who happened to be a medical oncologist. It usually seemed a good  thing that we shared so much of our work lives and could help and  understand each other. Spending our days in the midst of cancer, as  we both did, we recognized and appreciated our own good health and  good fortune.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had lived through the death of my beloved father, my mother's aging  and increasing needs, the loss of too many patients and friends to  cancer. I had come through a divorce and was hopeful that my  daughters and I were moving forward toward better times. My older  daughter was clearly thriving in college, and my younger girl was a  typical twelve-year-old, wondering about boys and friendships and  whether I could drive her to the mall on Friday evening.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I try to remember who I was and how my life was before breast  cancer, I think especially of my work. My hospital, Beth Israel  Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has always been a well-known and  respected center for breast cancer treatment. When I began to work  there in 1979, it was one of only three institutions in the country  where some women with certain forms of the disease were regularly  offered the choice of a wide excision (lumpectomy) and radiation  therapy rather than mastectomy. Many women came from distant cities  to avail themselves of this breast-conserving option. The diagnosis  and treatment of breast cancer was an institutional priority and  quickly became my passion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the years since then, I have developed a wonderful and  well-respected psychosocial support program for women who have breast  cancer. With the overarching goal always empowerment and community, I  have met with women and their families for counseling, facilitated  countless support groups for women in all stages of breast cancer,  developed a model peer-support program called Patient to Patient,  Heart to Heart, and offered many special programs. I have been active  in many national breast cancer and professional organizations and  have lectured widely. I have been on the faculty at the Harvard  Medical School and the Boston University School of Social Work.  Additionally, I have written numerous professional articles about  psychosocial aspects of breast cancer and, following my own  diagnosis, about my dual perspective and experience as patient and  clinician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough the years, I have known and loved hundreds of women with  breast cancer. I have spent thousands of hours with them and with  their families as they learned to cope with their disease and its  treatment. I have kept watch by too many bedsides as women died of  this illness, and I have grieved later with their husbands and  children. I have always had an enormous respect for the power of  breast cancer and never underestimated its strength and guile.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy style with my patients had always been one of relatively few rigid  boundaries and of shared human relationships, but my own diagnosis of  cancer shattered any lingering walls between us and set up a new  paradigm of truly working together. Whether in individual sessions in  my office or in groups, we together, sharing our strength, turned to  face down the tiger. We rebuilt our lives and we eventually came to  appreciate the clarity that cancer brings. My own vision gradually  expanded to include a life lived in parallel: therapist and patient,  caregiver and care recipient. My strongest alliances shifted to stand  with my patients rather than with my professional colleagues. I live  a double life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe who work for long years in oncology learn the lessons that our  patients have to teach. We know that life is fragile and fleeting. We  know that there is no true safety, that our insistence on healthy  diets, exercise, and stress management are illusions of control. We  understand that there are no real differences between our patients  and us except that they have already received a diagnosis of a  life-threatening illness. One of my surgeon friends tells his  patients, \"We are all pre-op.\" Unlike most people, we spend our  workdays immersed in illness and death and keenly appreciate the fact  that life can change or end in a moment. Denial is not an option.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is something else. We who work long in oncology, whether we are  doctors or nurses or social workers, believe at some subconscious  magical level that we have struck a bargain with the gods. Of course  we understand intellectually that this is not so, but in our hearts  the pact has been sealed. We take on seemingly endless loads of  sadness; we carry others' hope; we give and we do and we know that  one person can make a difference. We spend our days trying to heal  others. This is supposed to buy us, and those whom we love,  protection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor years, in both my professional and my personal lives, I had said,  \"When I get breast cancer . . .\" When asked by my patients if I had  been through the experience, I always answered, \"Not yet.\" I  sometimes sat with my breast cancer support groups and wondered how  each of the women there had first discovered her cancer and how I  would someday find my own. Why did I feel that way? My mother had  breast cancer in her mid-sixties, was treated and stayed well, and no  one else in my family had breast or ovarian cancer. Hardly anyone in  my extended family had ever had any kind of cancer at all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one would have considered me to be part of a high-risk family.  Being the daughter of a woman who had postmenopausal breast cancer  does not appreciably increase one's risk. Why was I so certain?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the fall of 1992 and early winter of 1993, I felt vaguely  unwell. There was nothing that I could pinpoint and not even anything  I could describe. There was only a certainty that something was not  right. Following a number of years in a difficult marriage, a  separation, and a subsequent divorce that had been very hard on me as  well as on my children, I was in love. For the first time in a  decade, I was truly happy and felt that my life was working out.  Being superstitious enough to be concerned about bringing my good  fortune to the attention of the fates, I wondered whether my diffuse  malaise was a defense. Was I trying to trick the heavens into  thinking I had already had my share of troubles and needed no more?  Could I possibly have believed that each of us is required to contend  with a set amount of pain?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes I would look in the mirror and think, Well, I am getting  older. That is why I look and feel this way. But I knew that was not  it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have a vivid memory of stepping out of the shower on a cold morning  in January 1993 and stating: \"There is something seriously wrong with  me.\" My fiancé, a medical oncologist and professor at the Harvard  Medical School, tried to tell me I was wrong. He suggested that most  New Englanders feel that way during the depths of winter. He told me  that I was probably not getting enough sleep and certainly was  working too hard. I knew he was wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA few weeks later I knew the reason for my sense of foreboding. Early  in the morning, still half-asleep in bed, I stretched and my hand  went straight to a lump in my left breast that had never been there  before. I had been compulsive for years about breast  self-examination, had yearly mammograms, and I knew the landscape of  my naturally lumpy breasts. This was different. In that first instant  of blinding recognition, my brain and my heart and my stomach reacted  as one. I knew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince then, I have listened as many women have told me that they knew  that something was wrong before their breast cancer was detected.  They simply did not feel right. Many of us know our bodies well and  our instincts are apt to be correct. One woman told me of being aware  of an odd odor in the months preceding her diagnosis; it disappeared  when her tumor was surgically removed. Another told a story of  dreaming that she had found a lump. She awakened in a panic and  touched the place on her breast where the dream lump had been. There  was a real lump there and it was cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wonder now whether I always had heard these stories but dismissed  them. Certainly many women describe exactly the opposite situation.  They say, \"I had never felt better in my life at the time that my  breast cancer was found.\" We are all different, but I now have a deep  and abiding respect for women's instincts about their bodies. When  someone tells me that she is sure something is wrong, I listen  carefully. Often she is right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving spent so many years working with women who have had breast  cancer, I was well educated about the issues and the impact of the  disease. I knew about treatment options, side effects, statistics,  and recurrence risks. I understood that breast cancer is a family  disease and that everyone in the family is affected. I knew about  work-life struggles, concerns about insurability, and changes in  professional roles. I knew that friendships often changed, that  marriages sometimes faltered, that sexuality and sense of self were  always touched. I understood that fear and sadness became permanent  companions. I thought I knew all about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe diagnosis of breast cancer brought me to my knees.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first, the very first lesson for me was that I knew nothing about  what it was really like to have breast cancer. Working with other  mothers was no preparation for having to tell my own daughters of my  diagnosis. Talking with other daughters was no preparation for having  to tell my own mother that her worst nightmare of seeing breast  cancer extend into another generation had come true. Talking with  other wives was no preparation for realizing that my own beloved  might someday be with another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMainly, there was no way to prepare for the feelings. I was  overwhelmed with terror and grief and anger. I literally did not know  where to put those emotions. In the first months of working as I  learned to live with my own cancer, I struggled daily with the fear.  How could I sit with a woman who was dying of breast cancer, a woman  who had a daughter exactly the same age as my younger girl, and help  her think about how best to prepare her daughter for life without a  mother? How could I comfort a woman, diagnosed and treated in tandem  with me, who now had widely metastatic cancer and was facing a grim  and uncertain future? How could I be helpful to anyone when my own  heart was pounding and my own soul was trembling?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI raged and I wept and I recognized that I had to find a way or I  could not continue. I began to look at my patients and realized that  I was surrounded by lessons in how to live with fear and sadness.  Each day I was amid ordinary people who were doing extraordinary  things; I had only to watch them and to learn. Gradually the raw  intensity subsided and a way emerged to continue with life through  treatment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the months passed and the end of chemotherapy finally arrived, I  learned the second important lesson. In retrospect, the crisis of  diagnosis and the difficult months of physical treatment are almost  the easy part. The real challenge comes with living with breast  cancer. It is clear that the goal must be to live as though the  cancer will never return. Living any other way, mired in anxiety and  sadness, means that the cancer wins, whether it recurs or not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLearning how to live \"as if\" is the reason for this book. It is, of  course, a labor of love. I am blessed to spend my days with women who  are learning with me how to live, and live well, in spite of the  cloud of breast cancer. As increasing numbers of women survive and  live many years after treatment, the focus of attention shifts.  Everything about a woman's life is changed by the experience, and the  physical and psychological difficulties can be demanding. The issues  of survivorship must be appreciated for what they are: the fruits of  pain and the rewards of living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChapter Two\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinishing Treatment:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Very First Weeks\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt this point you are physically exhausted and emotionally spent. You  may be bald, burned, and weigh either fifteen pounds more or ten  pounds less than you did at the start. When you look in the mirror,  you don't look like yourself. You most certainly do not feel like  yourself. You have used all of your strength and resilience to get  this far yet are now facing a long and uncertain road back to health.  It is a strange disease indeed that leaves you feeling far worse at  the completion of treatment than you did at the time of diagnosis!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCompleting active treatment for breast cancer is often an  otherworldly experience. All of a sudden, you are congratulated and  abruptly thrust back into the land of the well. You, of course, are  not feeling well and understand that you will remain \"chemically  altered\" for some weeks. Even if this day, your final treatment, has  been circled in red on your calendar for months, you probably  approach it with some uncertainty. You may be surprised that you do  not feel like celebrating. You may find that you approach the final  chemotherapy infusion or radiation treatment with trepidation or even  sadness. Although the months of treatment may have passed very slowly  and although you may have been dreaming of this moment for a long  time, you are probably not truly prepared to leave behind everything  about being a patient. It is an important moment, a day to remember  and to ponder, but it is not a festive occasion. During the months of  treatment, many women expect to feel jubilant upon finishing. They  sometimes imagine bringing a cake into the radiation department on  the final day or going out to dinner with friends that night. It is  certainly possible that you will feel this way, but do not be  surprised if, instead of relief, you feel scared and even let down.Updated version","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301239738597,"sku":"NP9780553384253","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553384253.jpg?v=1767721095","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/after-breast-cancer-isbn-9780553384253","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}