When a family member got diagnosed with breast cancer I felt that I had to do a deep dive into the subject matter in order to help them navigate the situation. The first place I decided to look for information was in books. I know that info in books can be very dated, but it is usually good for basic information and you can carry it around with you and read on the go. For this article I'm going to highlight two different book experiences I had that in a way shows some of the extremes you can run into using books to do medical research.
Of the books I found,
The Breast Cancer Survival Manual by John Link, was one of the best. It goes into a lot of detail and helped us to figure out which questions we should be asking the doctors. It also let us know when the doctors were withholding information from us. I tell people that they have to become experts on their medical conditions because both doctors and the American medical system can not be trusted. My specific example of this is that the doctors would only tell us the stage of cancer and not the type. It took me asking very pointed questions and talking about the specific types to get them to tell us the type of breast cancer she had. Knowing the specific type makes a big difference in the options you have and by doctors withholding this information they block you from knowing what your options are. This book was pivotal in helping me build specific questions and hold the doctors accountable for what treatment options we had. I would highly recommend this book to both people diagnosed with cancer and their families. I also found this at the local library.
Taking Charge of Breast Cancer by Julia Eriksen was less then helpful. During this time I had access to a college library. To be specific the Auraria Campus library that serves 3 different colleges including students in different medical programs. For a library that supports medical students I found their medical and health books really lacking compared to the public library. I thought that this would have been the reverse, but was super disappointed. This was actually the best book on breast cancer that they had. It mostly was just a collection of different peoples' experiences, which is great to know how varied the breast cancer journey experience can be, but it didn't really have any useful information in it. It was too personal and not educational enough. When you are going through the breast cancer experience you don't have a lot of time to educate yourself, and reading this book was a waste of time when compared to other books out there that had information that you could put into instant use. I would say don't waste your time on this book, there are better options out there to help you in your breast cancer journey.
These two books show the differences in quality of the books you can find on a subject and how where you can find quality books on a subject can be surprising. I would have thought that a college would have held the more useful and information packed books, but in this case my local library was much more helpful. At the same time I felt that both locations had very few books on a subject that impacts the lives of so many people. The breast cancer center had posters up where they talked about 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer. That's really high. Then even if you don't get it, more then likely a friend or family member will get it. Breast cancer is very impactful to our society and I feel that there needs to be easier access to more information on it in general. For my own learning experience I had to focus more on medical journals and peer reviewed articles. Which for the general population, understanding the language alone used in those type of resources makes the information out of reach for them. I'm lucky because of my background in science and medicine, but for most the information is very much gate kept by the medical profession. There are a few basic places people can turn, like Web MD, but you need to be careful of what you find on the web. As always I recommend doing research on not only where your info comes from, but on the authors of any books or articles you turn to.
I will try to share more of my experiences of the breast cancer journey as I can. It is a lot of appointments and then also trying to support someone on the emotional path can also eat up a lot of time. I wish all who have to deal with this in any way the best of luck.
Picture 1 From: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33574220-the-breast-cancer-survival-manual
Picture 2 From: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2190850.Taking_Charge_of_Breast_Cancer
