Conversations with Breast Cancer Patients

About the Book

From diagnosis through the progression of their disease, breast cancer patients confide to their oncologist their fears, their hopes, the personal problems created by their illness, and their ways of coping—or their inability to cope—with the disease and its treatment. Drawing on forty years of treating women and men diagnosed with breast cancer, author and oncologist Ernest Greenberg shares stories recounting the close collaboration in the therapeutic decision process he has had with patients over the course of his practice. As these patients discussed their options, they managed to laugh but also did not hide their tears. These conversations reveal how physician and patients worked together in the effort to make life with or after breast cancer livable and, whenever possible, enjoyable. The result is an honest and open examination not of treatment options—as those change constantly, frequently at the interval of only a few months—but of how to live with the illness and the treatment that it requires. Presenting a conversational account of living with breast cancer and its aftermath, this collection of personal narratives offers a message of hope and positive thinking.

About the Author

Ernest Greenberg, MD, has devoted his career to the research and treatment of breast cancer during the course of forty years at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as well as in private practice; he was also on the staff of the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. He is the founder and chairman of the Greenberg Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This is his first book. He is now retired from medical practice and started a new career in art.