I Am Not My Breast Cancer: Women Talk Openly about Love and Sex, Hair Loss and Weight Gain, Mothers and Daughters, and Being a Woman with Breast Cancer Book

Reading I Am Not My Breast Cancer is like attending a support group for women with breast cancer, only better. Instead of hearing the experiences of one or a few women, the reader shares the cancer journey with hundreds of women. The 800 women who participated in the original project from which the book is drawn are from all across the United States and from several other countries as well. They shared their feelings and experiences with openness and honesty. They laughed and cried together, gave each other advice, and bonded with each other.

Ruth Peltason took those many and varied threads and wove them lovingly into this book. I Am Not My Breast Cancer is not a medical resource, it is a practical resource. It is not the story of one woman's breast cancer, it is the distillation of hundreds of women's experiences with breast cancer--young women, women in midlife, older women, women with early stage disease and women with metastatic disease. Ms. Peltason, herself a two time breast cancer survivor, treats each woman's experience with dignity and respect.

Any woman touched by breast cancer will find herself in the pages of this book, and it will help those around her understand a little better what she may be going through. Cancer centers and doctors' offices should be sure this volume is added to their libraries--it fills a void and meets a need like no other book out there. As a breast cancer survivor, I say, "Thank you, Ms. Peltason, for writing I Am Not My Breast Cancer!"