Everything Changes: The Insider's Guide to Cancer in Your 20's and 30's

admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:02:00 +0000

When I read the title of this book, it piqued my interest instantly. Let's face it: there is a lot out there about people over forty and their struggle with cancer, and even quite a bit about children with cancer. In fact, when I think of cancer, I usually picture someone the age of my parents and grandparents, or the boys and girls in ads for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. I don't picture myself or my fiancé, sisters, or friends. So I cracked this book open not really knowing what to expect. I quickly learned that 70,000 people in their twenties and thirties are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. Because they are not the face of cancer, they deal with a unique set of problems and often feel quite alone. Kairol Rosenthal, herself a cancer patient, wants to change that.

Rosenthal set out to write a book filled with the authentic experiences of real people. She wanted to tell their stories in their words and show that just as not every case of cancer is the same, not every cancer patient is the same. These young people are as diverse as any of us. Some reject the label "survivor," while others embrace it. Some find comfort in their loved ones like never before, while others feel it is too much to put on a happy face so they handle it alone. The book would have been poignant enough if she had merely put these stories on paper, but she didn't leave it at that. She also wanted to help cancer patients, along with their friends and families by providing resources, often free or inexpensive, that cover almost everything you can think of: health insurance, being a student, getting divorced, clinical trials, and much more.

Each chapter tells the story of one cancer patient, interwoven with some of Rosenthal's own experiences, and pull quotes from other patients about how they dealt with the issues brought up in that chapter. She ends each chapter by listing resources connected directly to the challenges the patient in that chapter deals with. For example, the chapter about Wafa'a, a single twenty-something who feels her body is worthless, ends with a section about dating, sex, body image, and relationships. She shares when and how to reveal you have cancer while dating, booklets that teach you how to achieve orgasm and avoid pain, and websites that help you shop for make-up, wigs, and comfortable clothing.

The format of the book helps drive home not only the feelings and beliefs of the people Rosenthal interviewed, but also practical things that can be done to deal with these struggles. I liked that she left their experiences in their own words, because it made me feel like I was there in the room with them. I felt the narration she sprinkled in was eloquent and helped tie themes together. These themes were sometimes specific to cancer, but most often about life, healing, race, gender, age, relationships, and other things that come up in everyone's lives but pose a different challenge for young people living with cancer. I appreciated most that by the end of the book, I felt very empowered, and had learned a lot about these people's lives and what I might do if one of them was my friend.

The ultimate take-away: if you are a young person diagnosed with cancer, you are not at all alone; if you know somebody affected by cancer, treat them with the care, concern, respect and appreciation you always have, no more and no less. And, of course, read this book and share it with the people you love.

Written by: frau sally benz, July 25th 2009

Boyfriend University: Take Advantage of Your Man and Learn While You Can

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:52:00 +0000

By Jennifer Sander, Lynne Rominger

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In 1994 I was sitting around a bonfire in my combat boots and a thrift store granny dress, drinking homebrew and wondering how many years it had been since I’d used a razor, when someone handed me a pamphlet from the 1930s about how to be a “good wife.” And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—it was demeaning and yet terribly serious all at once, and we laughed with a combination of horror and relief that the world had changed so much since our grandmothers were young.

This particular memory came flooding back to me when I received Boyfriend University by Jennifer Sander and Lynne Rominger. The premise is both insulting and intriguing: “Take advantage of your man and learn while you can.” The authors offer details of their personal dating history and all of the invaluable information they gleaned from the men they spent time with. Auto repair, how to smoke a cigar, how to play beer pong, kick in a door, fix a clogged toilet, and barbeque anything; these skills and many more are outlined so that you can take what they already learned and add it to your ‘masculine’ skill set. Also included are how to cry like a guy, how to bluff and flatter, and how to know if he’s a fixer-upper and worth keeping.

Not a big shock that the publisher happens to be the same one that gives us the “For Dummies” line of literature. The authors have done a lot of work on many other projects distributed by Wiley: Sander is also the author of The Martini Diet and Wear More Cashmere.

While I think that the opinions offered up in this book are materialistic, catty, shallow, and deeply disturbing, I must also admit that their "how to" advice is, for the most part, valid and not altogether useless. Still, while it’s true that I know a lot about cars because I once dated a mechanic, the tone of this book just feels too close to what made Paris Hilton a celebrity and took us from Dr. Martens to Manolo Blahniks in the nineties. It’s as though my grandmother wrote it with a nom de plume as the flapper’s response to the how to be a “good wife” pamphlet, and that was eighty years ago.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, April 25th 2009