The Bottom Line
Pros
- Well written breast cancer memoir
- Wicked sense of humor
- Honest with the reader
- Clear descriptions
- Hope in the face of the impossible
Cons
- Hard to keep reading when the pain hits
Description
- "Courage is a real turn-on."
- "Cancer has become like a deadly sporting event."
- "What? You've never discussed your cancer? Fire your shrink!"
Guide Review - The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer -- And Back
When most of us hear the phrase "Stage 4 cancer" we assume it means imminent death. But is that still true for everybody? Rich tells us the story of her marriage to a blonde "sexy like a rugby player" Argentinean journalist, the breakup of the marriage, and the discovery of a breast lump in the midst of that stress. Diagnosed at age 32, she enters Cancerland, and admits to her 2-pack a day cigarette habit, drinking a lot, and eating "like s**t."
She tells us her story in a confident voice, from the discovery of the lump, convincing a surgeon to do a biopsy on it, navigating from one oncologist who avoided her to another oncologist who was very supportive, chemo, radiation, hormone therapy and a bone marrow transplant, to the death of her mother and yet another recurrence of her own cancer. Her descriptions of pain, when the cancer went to her spine, are hard to read, but her determination and thick applications of humor carry us through this with her. While recovering from the bone marrow transplant she writes, "You have just gone through a procedure that cost a quarter of a million ... You cannot spend that kind of money and then kill yourself" we smile with her.
Rich hangs on through all the bad news and the pain, learning to sing, to love again, and to develop a survivor attitude. She educates herself about her cancer, about people, about living and dying. Read this book to see what overcoming the odds really means.
