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    A Breast Cancer Alphabet
    Unavailable
    A Breast Cancer Alphabet
    Unavailable
    A Breast Cancer Alphabet
    Audiobook2 hours

    A Breast Cancer Alphabet

    Written by Madhulika Sikka

    Narrated by Madhulika Sikka

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A definitive and approachable guide to life during, and after, breast cancer

    The biggest risk factor for breast cancer is simply being a woman.  Madhulika Sikka's A Breast Cancer Alphabet offers a new way to live with and plan past the hardest diagnosis that most women will ever receive: a personal, practical, and deeply informative look at the road from diagnosis to treatment and beyond.

    What Madhulika Sikka didn't foresee when initially diagnosed, and what this book brings to life so vividly, are the unexpected and minute challenges that make navigating the world of breast cancer all the trickier.  A Breast Cancer Alphabet is an inspired reaction to what started as a personal predicament.

    This A-Z guide to living with breast cancer goes where so many fear to tread: sex (S is for Sex - really?), sentimentality (J is for Journey - it's a cliché we need to dispense with), hair (H is for Hair - yes, you can make a federal case of it) and work (Q is for Quitting - there'll be days when you feel like it).  She draws an easy-to-follow, and quite memorable, map of her travels from breast cancer neophyte to seasoned veteran.

    As a prominent news executive, Madhulika had access to the most cutting edge data on the disease's reach and impact.  At the same time, she craved the community of frank talk and personal insight that we rely on in life's toughest moments.  This wonderfully inventive book navigates the world of science and story, bringing readers into Madhulika's mind and experience in a way that demystifies breast cancer and offers new hope for those living with it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 25, 2014
    ISBN9780804192798
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for A Breast Cancer Alphabet

    3.5/5

    19 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I received this book from a friend who got it as an Advance Reader's Edition. The book consists of 26 sections, each of which are only a few pages. Each section concentrates on a particular aspect of the cancer journey. It is part memoir and part informative. In one sense, I wish I had had it to look through while I was going through treatment, but on the other, cancer takes up so much of your life, that most of the time, the last thing I wanted to do was be reading about it too.
    • 5/5
      A nice quick read. A good start for anyone with this disease and a good stopping point for people who dont want to know more
    • 5/5
      During this month of October, I felt it was especially appropriate to share this book. A BREAST CANCER ALPHABET isn't just for the person with cancer, but for those who love and care for the person with cancer. I would even offer that even though this book focuses specifically, in certain chapters, about breast cancer, this book could be helpful to anyone with any form of cancer. While working as a producer with NPR, Sikka found out she had breast cancer. As she traveled through chemo and hair loss, surgeries and sickness, she found there wasn't a book to tell you exactly what you wanted and needed to hear while going through the days of cancer. Sikka wrote this book to remind those with cancer and their families and friends that you can still smile, life still goes on and most importantly, you have every right to feel the way you do.The book is laid out exactly as you would expect. Each chapter begins with a letter of the alphabet that explains a part of living with cancer. In the "A is for Anxiety" chapter, you will find that anxiety isn't a feeling experienced just during the waiting game after a lump is found, but a part of life that continues years after you are "cancer free". The anxiety during your treatments is just as real as the anxiety you feel in the back of your mind, always wondering if your cancer will come back. In the "E is for Epiphany" chapter, Sikka explains that all those dreams and wishes you had in your "pre-cancer" life are nothing compared to the dreams you have in your "after-cancer" life. Realizing that your life was pretty great just as it was may be the epiphany you needed. There are also practical chapters like "P is for Pillows" in which the author shares the practicality and necessity of a three-by-six-inch pillow. I found A BREAST CANCER ALPHABET to be a practical, yet emotional book. Just because I am a woman makes me a large target for the wretched breast cancer beast. Reading this book made me fearful, yet encouraged. I get my annual mammograms. I perform monthly self-checks. But, I also have a family history of breast cancer. I know the risk for me is high and I found comfort in the pages of this book. Sikka was honest, thorough, and creative in her informative book. I am more aware of how cancer patients feel, physically and emotionally, because of her honesty. This is a book that should be shared with every woman you know. We can become better patients, caregivers, and friends with the knowledge in this book.
    • 4/5
      If you're ever diagnosed with breast cancer, this is a great perspective on what to expect, how to fight the anxieties, fears, pain, guilt -- how to cope with it all. This is the book I wanted to write.
    • 1/5
      While I expected genuine insight into the complex impact of breast cancer, I was disappointed to read a superficial listing of supports. This might have minimal and brief assistance in reality.
    • 3/5
      While, luckily, I'm not currently the target audience for this book, I imagine I'd find it very helpful if I were alone going through this experience. Sikka's book is not what you need if you're expecting real advice on what to do, but rather acts as a supportive friend--telling you that it's ok, it's going to be ok, and giving a few helpful tips that other books miss. And, after all, if the executive producer of an NPR show says it's ok to baby yourself sometimes or rely on others, that seems pretty sound. All in all, certainly not a stand-alone guide to breast cancer---this book does not attempt to be either informative or comprehensive. But for those who need a helping hand, to read something by someone who's been through the trenches, hopefully this book will provide some comfort and ideas to make life a bit easier, a bit less scary.
    • 4/5
      Not quite a memoir, not quite advice, intended as support for newly diagnosed from someone who has been there. It does that decently - and the 26 essay are a great length for reading in short bursts. This should not replace specific medical information from doctors and might be particularly useful to leave around the house for family and friends to pick up and browse. The author writes well- not surprising for a professional media news person, I think the project was conceived for her benefit as much as the potential readers' but that is ok. It provides her perspective and some outside information but is mostly a supportive, but not sentimental guide to what breast cancer looks like from the patient's point of view. Each story is different but there are enough common threads that this book can be useful.
    • 4/5
      I'm trying to figure out how I got this book. I mean I know I got it from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, but I don't remember selecting it and it's not normally the kind of book I'd select. That being said, I decided to dive in anyway.Madhulika Sikka is an editor for NPR News who chronicles her experiences with breast cancer in The Breast Cancer Alphabet. It's not your normal chronicle however. The book is comprised of 26 very small chapters, each a couple of pages long--one for each letter of the alphabet. All the way from "A is for Anxiety" to "Z is for ZZZs." Her intended audience are those women newly diagnosed with breast cancer who are trying to figure out how the hell they just ended up in Cancerland, that "strange land of surgeries, and drugs and side effects, and pain and anxiety, and you didn't even have a minute to prepare for it."Throughout the book you follow Sikka as she chronicles how she learned to deal with her body, her family, her doctors and her pain. Since each chapter is so small, it's easy to get through them quickly. Their brevity also means that they aren't deep, soul-searching kinds of chapters, if that's what you're looking for, but you definitely get a sense of Sikka's initial disorientation and her life during treatment, and the postscript follows her out the other side.Sikka positions her book is as a counter to the idea of the pink-powered warrior that dominates much of the conversation around breast cancer. She argues that she's not a warrior, she's just a woman dealing with a terrible disease, and she counsels her readers that Cancerland is not "a world of fuzzy pink gauze, soft teddy bears, and garlands of ribbons" but a world of indignities that it is "okay to feel indignant about."As I read the book I kept mentally comparing it to The Emperor of All Maladies, which is one of the best non-fiction books that I've read, a real must-read history of the disease, the research behind it, and the attempts to eradicate it. While A Breast Cancer Alphabet doesn't position itself as that sort of book, it gets lost in deciding what kind of book it wants to be--a memoir or a self-help book. Maybe it's because I read the book from the standpoint of a healthy woman (knock on wood), but I found the memoir parts more gripping and wish she had approached the subject solely from that angle.
    • 5/5
      When Elizabeth Edwards died of breast cancer in 2010, the author of this book was in the White House with an NPR crew to interview the President. Pretty Christmas tree? New Rug? Sikka couldn’t tell you because, in the forefront of her mind, she was awaiting a phone call that could (and did) change her life.Breast Cancer! Scary news! I know this because this past September I received the same phone call. Plans to be planned, decisions to be decided, life goes on but on a totally different course. If only I’d had this book. Seriously. Ms. Sikka writes in woman-speak, tells it as it is and offers some great ideas along the way. I loved the format of this book: A-Z with each chapter getting a page or so. I loved her references to Cancerland (I live there, too!) and to let yourself be YOU. Most important. No one can do that for you, although they can (and, if they offer, should) do darn near anything else.Coming out in February, 2014, I hope this shows up in Dr. offices and hospital libraries because it can help – a lot.
    • 3/5
      One of the first things one wants after receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer is a trusted friend, someone who has been through it and can both sympathize and tell you the hard truths that nobody else can, or will. This book aims to fill that role for those who don’t have such a friend. The author is kind and straightforward. What is it like to lose your hair? What are the painful, embarrassing, and discouraging realities of going through cancer treatment? What can friends do for you that will really help? And so on. I especially liked the author’s rejection of the fuzzy sentimentality that people often apply to breast cancer. Cancer is not a mystical “journey” nor is it a land of happy, smiling “warriors”, surrounded by pink ribbons and teddy bears. My main problem with the book is the “alphabet” format. Most subjects do not lend themselves logically to being organized alphabetically by artificially determined headings. Books organized in this way often tend to be choppy, jumping around from point to point instead of flowing organically. And the entries under each letter are often brief and superficial, or awkward because they’ve been shoehorned into an organizational scheme that doesn’t make sense. The author is an experienced journalist, perceptive and articulate. I wish she’d written her book in the more traditional narrative style. The book as written is just a little too slight in feeling for me to wholeheartedly recommend it.