After Cancer: Guide to Your New Life. A »

Wendy Schlessel Harpham, is an internist in Dallas, Texas, where she lives with her husband and three children. She is the author of After Cancer: A Guide to Your New Life and Diagnosis Cancer: Your Guide Through the First Few Months.

As anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer knows, surviving cancer is more than just killing cancer cells and getting through treatment. Patients must deal with the emotional, social, spiritual, and financial fallout of a cancer diagnosis. By helping survivors understand that they can't go back to where they were before cancer, Dr. Wendy Harpham liberates them to move forward to a different, "new normal." In a reader-friendly, question-and-answer format, Dr. Harpham (herself a cancer survivor) addresses a wide range of issues. Among them are understanding the medicine of reevaluation, follow-up, and prevention after treatment; dealing with the most common physical aftereffects of treatment; learning how to make decisions about work and school; relating to friends and family; helping children deal with parents' cancer; and coping with the practicalities of living wills and insurance.

Publishers Weekly

Harpham (Diagnosis Cancer), a Dallas internist diagnosed with lymphoma in 1990, is no stranger to the challenges, physical and emotional, faced by people who have had cancer and chemotherapy. In a poignant introduction describing her illness, the author tells of the changes one must confront after treatment. She makes it clear that there is no special formula for recovery, and that timetables are of no particular consequence because everyone is different. Her useful Q&A format candidly addresses many central questions: long-term side effects, probability of recurrences, diet considerations, coping with depression. Living with cancer and its aftereffects is an ongoing education in living, says Harpham, who advises how to cope between cancer checkups, when to call the physician and when not to worry. Post-cancer fatigue is discussed in depth. In addition to the facts cancer survivors must know to make the best possible recovery, the author provides readers with hope. This is ``must'' reading for anyone coping with the aftermath of cancer treatments, as well as for their families and friends. (Sept.)