Cancerous Thoughts

This edition originally published: South Yarra, Vic.: Michelle Anderson Publishing, 2013.

How to change your thought forms and avoid both physical and spiritual illness. You are what you believe.

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." —Sally Rooney, author of Normal People "Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." —Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer--including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life--cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

"I thought you were on anti-depressants." "Pardon me?" "You acted so happy at that time, I honestly thought you were taking something." What my dear friend was saying is what I know many of my friends and family members were thinking. Linda is holding it up so well. She must be so scared inside. She is trying to be so positive on the outside but surely she must be trembling on the inside. After all, her cancer wasn't caught early. 9 cm x 8 cm breast tumour is not small by any means. How could anyone with that diagnosis be happy? How could anyone with that diagnosis and a three-year-old child be happy? Surely, Linda is putting on a great performance! What most people didn't realize was that I was truly happy. My cancer experience was the best event in my life next to the birth of my son. How could it not be? What I learned and am about to share in this book is how I realized that I was in control of my life including the cancer. Immediately after I received the cancer diagnosis, I instinctively knew it was my mind that needed healing and I also knew that I better figure out how to heal that mind quickly so that my physical body can begin to heal. But what I didn't realize at that time was how God was about to show me how.

This indispensable clinical guidebook describes and illustrates how to conduct a successful diagnostic mental health interview. James Morrison details effective methods for posing clinical questions; what the clinician should ask to obtain complete, accurate information; and how to select the best strategy to meet any clinical situation. Throughout, the author interweaves research on what works in mental health interviewing along with fresh insights on how to build rapport and enhance patient motivation.

When it comes to disease, who beats the odds — and why? When it comes to spontaneous healing, skepticism abounds. Doctors are taught that “miraculous” recoveries are flukes, and as a result they don’t study those cases or take them into account when treating patients. Enter Dr. Jeff Rediger, who has spent over 15 years studying spontaneous healing, pioneering the use of scientific tools to investigate recoveries from incurable illnesses. Dr. Rediger’s research has taken him from America’s top hospitals to healing centers around the world—and along the way he’s uncovered insights into why some people beat the odds. In Cured, Dr. Rediger digs down to the root causes of illness, showing how to create an environment that sets the stage for healing. He reveals the patterns behind healing and lays out the physical and mental principles associated with recovery: first, we need to physically heal our diet and our immune systems. Next, we need to mentally heal our stress response and our identities. Through rigorous research, Dr. Rediger shows that much of our physical reality is created in our minds. Our perception changes our experience, even to the point of changing our physical bodies—and thus the healing of our identity may be our greatest tool to recovery. Ultimately, miracles only contradict what we know of nature at this point in time. Cured leads the way in explaining the science behind these miracles, and provides a first-of-its-kind guidebook to both healing and preventing disease.