What's a Body to Do?

About the Book

What's a Body To Do? The Breast Cancer Case Manager is part personal narrative, part resource guide, part personal organizer and workbook. It's designed to help newly diagnosed women start coping with their own cancer treatment.

Written by a writer who was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma shortly after her 49th birthday, the Case Manager contains all the useful advice and information she received from the people she met on her own journey through Cancerland: doctors, nurses, cancer counselors, social workers, support group members.

The Case Manager is organized chronologically, covering diagnosis, surgery, treatment, dealing with health plans, managing mental health, what it means to be a "survivor" and more.

The key chapters break down into two parts: first the humorous/ironic tale of the author's own experience with highlighted "tips" along the way, and second the "personal organizer." The organizer contains:

• annotated resource sections containing a selection of books, groups and Internet sites that provide reliable information without being overwhelming
• suggested questions to ask doctors
• diary pages
• master appointment record
• address book
• place to record pathology and test reports
• chemo and radiation "symptom journals"

The organizer provides the patient a way to keep all her "information" in one place, in a format compact enough to take along whenever she goes to the doctor's office.

The narrative is filled with humor--if not exactly laugh-out-loud-so-hard-till-you-cry funny, at least smile-in-understanding, wince-with-the-irony funny. Why? Because studies show that a good laugh is therapeutic, not to mention a very practical defense mechanism that can help anyone get through the terrible and terrifying experience of breast cancer treatment.

Despite the hundreds of books about breast cancer on the market, no other book is a case manager. No other single book provides the breast cancer patient a pre-packaged personal organizer to manage her own treatment -- so important when a woman is faced with the myriad, new and often bewildering details of being a cancer patient.

The goal of What's a Body To Do? The Breast Cancer Case Manager is to make it easier for women to take back control of their lives and manage their own, unique treatment. Knowledge is power, and the Case Manager provides women the launching pad from which to acquire it.

Early reviews:
"Pack up your hopes, a knowledgeable health care team, your social supports, and your spiritual beliefs to bring along on the journey through cancer treatment-you have a wealth of inner strength available to you, which The Breast Cancer Cas

About the Author

Lea Susan Chartock has been writing and editing for 20 years. She has worked on material ranging from magazine articles to scientific reports, documentary scripts to poems, environmental impact statements to soap operas, novels to Web page content. She has a Masters degree in Rhetoric and Composition and teaches writing at the University of Maryland and at The Johns Hopkins University.