5/5 ⭐ | Me and My Shadow: Memoirs of a Cancer Survivor by John Walker Pattison

Cancer affects those it encounters more than just physically.  There are emotional impacts, psychological impacts, and lifelong influences resulting from the disease. 

Author John Walker Pattison, born in 1957, admits to having a rather uneventful childhood.  While fun, happy, and full of life, nothing so newsworthy about his childhood would prompt a memoir.  Until 1975, at the age of eighteen when he begins experiencing bouts of fatigue.  So notable in fact that after climbing down into the cofferdams of a boat he is meant to be welding, he is found sleeping after missing lunch.  Time and time again his family doctor writes it off as something less life threatening, until he is admitted to the hospital with suspected appendicitis.  Tests, x-ray, pokes, and a series of investigations follows.  Resulting in our author being given no type of explanation, at least as far as he’s aware.  Learning later that his parents, in what they thought was an attempt to protect him, hid the truth of his cancer diagnosis. What follows is the toll this diagnosis took on him, his unrelenting love for Hawkwind and the unexpected support the Lakota Sioux Nation provided to him during his stage IV Hodgkin Lymphoma battle.

As a reader this memoir had a unique contribution to the field of cancer survivors.  Surviving stage IV lymphoma through the various treatments and long-term effects is an impressive and statistically unlikely event given his response to the treatment and options.  However, it’s the forty-seven-year survival, career pivot working thirty-two years as a nurse in cancer services, and his daughter also battling cancer at a young age that truly set this read apart from the rest.  The brutal honesty about his thoughts, psychological well-being, and treatment effects, open readers’ eyes to the gut-wrenching diagnosis of cancer and the guilt and responsibility that are placed on patient’s shoulders.   But the ongoing life he lives, dedication to the field of nursing in the same hospitals that treated him, and the comfort he found in Hawkwind and the Lakota Sioux Nation all these years later makes this a memorable read even after the last page is turned.

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5/5 ⭐ | Voices of Cancer: What We Really Want, What We Really Need by Lynda Wolters

Wow, the power and importance of this book is unmatched.  Providing the voice of cancer from both the patient and non-patient’s perspectives, this read is insightful and informative.

In today’s day and age many have been touched by cancer in some way, whether themselves or via a loved one, friend, or coworker.  It is a brutal diagnosis, as author Lynda Wolters describes herself and through those she’s met in her own journey.  In 2016 author Lynda Wolters’ world changed, she was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a stage 4 cancer, carrying a terminal diagnosis.  This news and this experience changed Lynda’s mentality in many ways.  Defining life before and after cancer she reflects on what she could have done better to support loved ones with cancer and explains the life altering changes cancer presents.  There is no “easy cancer” and there are inappropriate common phrases often said to those with cancer, Wolters offers insights and perspective from not just herself, but others with cancer as well in this read “Voices of Cancer.”

What started as journal entries on a blog about her own journey turned into this emotional and powerful book.  Providing an inside view from the patient’s perspective, a guide to being a better friend to someone with cancer, and the journey a care person can often take.  Having not experienced the mentality shift, the pain, fatigue, and absolute life altering label that is “cancer” myself, this was a critical read. I feel better equipped to provide true support and not just “prayers.”  Readers will walk away from reading “Voices of Cancer” with the confidence to show up, rather than be asked, and know what is needed from them and of them by those with cancer. 

“Voices of Cancer” is an emotional, and yet extremely necessary read that will never be forgotten by all who read it as long as this excruciating disease remains prevalent.  Thank you to author Lynda Wolters and all who lent their voice to this book, their knowledge, experiences, and feelings.

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