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Comment on Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) by Annabel Tall

Annabel Tall — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:31:58 +0000

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

A compulsive read, February 1, 2011

This review is from: Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) (Kindle Edition)

This is unquestionably the most beautiful book I have ever read. I sat and read it on my iphone in one sitting, leaving my dogs unwalked and chicken unroasted! I felt as though I was living alongside Cristina and Eurydice; from their wild, carefree life together, restricted only by flight schedules, to their long, solitary, incarceration in an American hospital room. In contrast to the seriousness of Eurydice's illness; colour, love and joy burst from the pages. I have written a book; as an amateur - I look on this book in awe! A compulsive read.

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Comment on Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) by Josh Cavanaugh

Josh Cavanaugh — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:08:49 +0000

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

A Brilliant Read, January 30, 2011

Josh Cavanaugh -

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This review is from: Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) (Kindle Edition)

Cristina Nehring's 'Journey to the Edge of the Light' is a poignant, probing, and profound memoir about her infant daughter's fight for life. In a month when Americans, inspired by Amy Chua's 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,' are re-examining how they interact with their children, Nehring's essay asks altogether more vital questions.

Single-parent Nehring's daughter, Eurydice, was 18-months-old when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. At the time, Nehring had published her first book, 'A Vindication of Love,' to wide acclaim. But this acclaim would be overshadowed by Nehring's new career - being a stay-at-home mom to Eurydice. The `home' in question - an isolation room at UCLA Children's Hospital in California.

With terrifying eloquence, Nehring describes the seven-months she lived on a pull-out chair next to the crib of her suffering child. Through this period of not knowing what would happen next, Nehring knew one thing: that she loved her daughter, and that she could not live without her.

As an award-winning essayist for Harper's, the Nation, and the Atlantic Monthly, Nehring came to prominence interrogating conventional wisdom and scrutinizing social norms. But it was when she had a child of her own that her expectations were truly upended. `Where I could have expected a long-limbed, light-haired, oval-faced, oversensitive little elf,' she writes in 'Journey,' `I had on my hands a short-limbed, dark-curled, spherical Buddha of a babe whose soft, steady gaze was like the still eye of a storm.'

Later Nehring describes Eurydice as `unintimidated, omnivorously curious, effusively affectionate, observant, ingratiating, utterly unroutinized and altogether trusting.' Nehring's prose is, too, omnivorously curious, observant, affectionate, but always honest and unintimidated.

With heartbreaking accuracy, she depicts the constant, chemical nightmare of hospital life. `One of the most jarring parts about accompanying your child into the hospital is witnessing the near-instant takeover of her body by medical technology. Eurydice had not been in isolation 24 hours when she was wheeled into surgery and emerged with a garish incision in her flawless infant's chest out of which dangled two outsize tubes. ... And into them, starting the next day, was funnelled the poison that doctors believed was Eurydice's strongest prayer of staying alive.'

In spite of this, 'Journey' is neither misery-memoir nor sob story. It is a narrative of tender reflection and honest appraisal, of awareness, affirmation, and, ultimately, optimism. During her time in hospital, Nehring evaluates anew what matters most in life.

Nehring's prose is infused with wit and warmth. `It is tempting to take up permanent residence in gray sweatpants,' Nehring writes of her introduction to hospital life. `Not Eurydice and me. With each passing month, I dressed my baby girl in more vibrant violets and reds, golds and greens, oranges and electric blues. Resistance through color, I called it in my head.'

She vows to defeat the darkness of disease with a `conflagration of color.' Her prose is similarly flashing in its insight and analysis. Like Susan Sontag, Nehring has the capacity to delineate disease as both a destructive reality and an elusive, almost mythical concept that resists interpretation. She mines through metaphor to uncover the often unspoken truth of cancer survivors. About chemo she is shockingly candid. `Chemo is Russian Roulette. You're shooting a gun whose contents you don't exactly know. There are bullets that pass through the target unnoticed. There are bullets that kill the organism altogether.'

In one of the strongest passages of the essay, Nehring takes issue with the writer Christopher Hitchens, who has said that cancer should not be conceived of as a battle. Cancer is absolutely a battle, Nehring tells us, one that we need to win, as much through affirmation and encouragement as through medical treatment.

In its ability to clarify, instruct, and inspire, Nehring's prose is in itself a kind of medicine. She writes movingly of `the power of a love enlarged by affliction, enfueled by encounters with eternity and illuminated with electric gratitude.' I too feel illuminated after reading this astonishing, often harrowing, but ultimately exhilarating essay.

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Comment on Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) by Charles stringham

Charles stringham — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:16:31 +0000

65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

Love extended, January 27, 2011

Charles stringham -

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This review is from: Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation (Kindle Single) (Kindle Singles) (Kindle Edition)

Cristina Nehring, whose "vindication" of consuming romantic love made a controversial stir last year, has begun to narrate an altogether different kind of love story. At the precise moment she learned that her book had been vaulted into the rarefied heights of serious public attention, she was also informed that her newborn daughter Eurydice had Downs syndrome-- and a related form of leukemia that would require extensive, long-term residential treatment. Nehring candidly admits she never intended to have children and that when she learned she was pregnant in consequence of a world-eclipsing love affair, every concerned friend and advocate she knew advised strongly against bringing the child to term. Something deeper in Nehring knew otherwise, and she is now in the second year of service of a love she finds more more sustaining than even that of the heroic lovers she celebrated in her first book.

The care and tending of Eurydice through the course of extended months of hospital care, invasive needles into her daughter's delicate vessels, the daily administering of necessary but nauseatingly toxic chemotherapy medicines-- could be the stuff of unreadable bathos. But in Nehring's case, it is miraculously otherwise.She is in love with this child, a love clearly requited. There is no martyrdom here, just dedication and an admirable openness to the next surprising thing. At this brief narrative's conclusion, there is hope and light on the horizon. Nehring has in mind a book-length treatment to come. Like this published preview, it will, I believe, be transporting. The details, the particulars can be heart- breaking. But the force of Nehring's love and the quality of attention paid to the winsome Eurydice is like nothing I have read before. Nehring may well be charting new emotional territory here, and it is most becoming.

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Comment on How long does cancer exist?When was the first case diagnosed and what type of cancer was it? by Emily

Emily — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:43:54 +0000

go to www.ask.com

Comment on How long does cancer exist?When was the first case diagnosed and what type of cancer was it? by c_d0gg2003

c_d0gg2003 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:26 +0000

Cancer has been around as long as life itself, with the potential for it to develop in any multicellular organism. It has been a hot topic in modern medicine because prior to the advent of antibiotics and advanced lifesaving techniques, people most often died of acute disease or traumatic injury. Nowadays, we have the “luxury” of dying of chronic illnesses related to old age, such as cancer and heart disease.

As far as the history of diagnosing cancer goes, the diagnosis for any type of cancer was previously called “consumption.” It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that doctors began differentiating between cancer types at any meaningful level.

If you’re interested, the reason why people tend to get cancer as they get older is a pretty complicated process that still isn’t fully understood, but it ultimately all boils down to mutations in DNA. Cancer is not a condition that just suddenly develops overnight. A cell or group of cells may develop abnormalities, but still be noncancerous at that point (a condition called “precancerous”). Part of what makes cancer so difficult to treat is the fact that by the time a group of cells become a full-blown malignancy, they have already picked up so many survivalist mutations that they are extremely difficult to kill. And in a manner analogous to the way bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, cancer cells can become resistant to treatments like chemotherapy because though a large number of the cancer cells may be killed, a few that have a mutation enabling them to survive the treatment chemicals will survive and reproduce – so in time, the only cancer cells you have left are resistant to a particular treatment or treatments. And it isn’t as simple as going in and cutting the cancer out, either – because by the time a group of cells are a full-blown cancer, they have gained the ability to delocalize, thus making it literally impossible to ever remove every single malignant cell via surgery.

Comment on How long does cancer exist?When was the first case diagnosed and what type of cancer was it? by adnhack

adnhack — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:43:07 +0000

since the sun exists….. the sun is the primitive thing can cause cancer in the skin, so i think its very old, but before people dont know how to call it

Comment on How long does cancer exist?When was the first case diagnosed and what type of cancer was it? by mattnocal7

mattnocal7 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:31:42 +0000

Cancer has probably been around since the beginning of life.

Cancer is cell respoduction gone out of control. The causes are highly varied and range from genetic to toxins that damage DNA to radiation that damages DNA.
Damaged or defective DNA code that controls cell reproduction may cause the cell to duplicate itself non-stop, and thus is cancerious.
Your body regularly has cancer like cells pop up but your immune system can kill them if they are found. But if your immune system doesn’t find it there will be a cancerious growth.

I’ve heard biologists and oncology researchers say that if you (or any other complex life form) lives long enough you will die of cancer. Meaning that if you could remain healthy in all other aspects, eventually a cancer cell will go unchecked and grow.

Comment on Coping With Breast Cancer. by D "dray e gone"

D "dray e gone" — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:50:27 +0000

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Takes one to know one. Kind of line been there Done that., December 30, 2011

D "dray e gone" (Redding, CA, United States) -

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This review is from: Coping With Breast Cancer.: A Husband's Perspective (Paperback)

Thats ok folks What held true back then is the same o. Since Feb or 2011 I have been living this book. Little did I know from Reading the peacekeepers that I would find my way to this great bit of help in the day to day life of Breast Cancer and the spouses parts.

Thanks

Rick

dray

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Comment on Coping With Breast Cancer. by J. Chambers

J. Chambers — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:50:12 +0000

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

A poignant story about facing adversity and surviving, December 13, 2011

J. Chambers (Georgia, United States) -

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This review is from: Coping With Breast Cancer. (Kindle Edition)

A couple of years ago, I read Ricky Sides' collection of short stories and nonfiction articles titled "Adventures in Reading." The collection included a short article about his wife Sue's long battle with breast cancer. As part of my review of the book, I wrote the following about the article:

"Coping with Breast Cancer" is the author's true account of his wife's battle against breast cancer. It's a very well written, compelling story that documents the long struggle from the initial diagnosis to the agonizing decision on which type of treatment to take to the end of treatment many months later. It's a remarkable story and particularly notable because it's written from a man's point of view."

I've now read the revised, longer version of "Coping With Breast Cancer," in which the author refined the earlier story and added some new material. His wife was only 35 years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to make the agonizingly difficult choice of which treatment options to pursue. Her treatments lasted for several years and caused enormous physical and emotional suffering. The disease deeply affected not only the author and his wife, but both of their families, their co-workers, and their friends. The author demonstrated how invaluable the support of others was for them.

In this expanded version of the author's earlier article, he adds additional material aimed at husbands on what they can do to help their wife, from early detection through the debilitating treatments.

A very poignant story with some heartbreaking moments, but one with a valuable lesson in meeting and overcoming fear and adversity.

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Comment on Cancer: Basic Science and Clinical Aspects by CrazyRunnerGirl

CrazyRunnerGirl — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:57:00 +0000

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Incredible., December 1, 2010

CrazyRunnerGirl (Beverly, MA) -

This review is from: Cancer: Basic Science and Clinical Aspects (Paperback)

Great book -- I actually had the authors as professors in college (before this book was out), and their biology of cancer course was hands down one of the best classes I took as a biology major. I'm so excited that this book is finally out! It is very clearly written by people who genuinely want to help you understand the content. You will not be disappointed.

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