2008-07-28 Approach with Caution

I am sure this is an excellent book for many women. Sadly, I didn't find it particularly helpful. I think part of the problem is that it is a personal guide written by a wife and mother, so there are pages and pages on husbands/partners and children. I am childless and not in a relationship so that large chunks of the book are not relevant to me. My major issue was telling my 81 year old mother that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The author also had to tell her mother, which she did over the phone, an episode covered by all of two rather jokey sentences. Apparently her mother swore. I told mine face to face and she fainted. I chose to have my treatment in the private sector. The author had hers on the NHS and thus the section on private treatment is exceedingly weak. Again, it comes down to personal experience. The breast care nurse who is co-author makes no mention of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which is part of the Department of health and regulates all medicinal products on the UK market. The MHRA is an excellent source of information on drugs used in the treatment of breast cancer - it licensed them.
The book is well written, which is to be expected as the author is a journalist, and if you want to read a book on breast cancer, its probably as good as any (and I've looked at a lot). Nevertheless, it didn't provide me with any more information than I easily obtained from Cancer Backup, Cancer Research and other such websites.