Touching Bottom

About the Book

Touching Bottom is the true story of the Redmond family and their victory over their two most feared enemies—cancer and death. When the middle child, a thirteen-year-old son, is stricken with a spinal cord tumor, his mother fights to avoid the inevitable. Although the parents often seem trapped in a maze of hate, fear, jealousy, and pride as they journey from doctor to doctor and from hospital to hospital, remarkable individuals touch their lives to offer comfort and strengthen their faith.

Every person who has stood by helplessly while a loved one suffered and died from the ravages of cancer will identify with this family. From doctors at America's most respected medical centers to cancer patients alone in their hospital rooms or surrounded by hospice nurses, Touching Bottom is bound to be a topic of conversation. It poses questions for both caregivers and patients, and gives new insight and hope as the dying son's path of light revives his grieving family.

About the Author

Barbara Redmond was a freelance writer from 1968 to 1978. During that time, her work was published seven times in national magazines. She also wrote articles that appeared in local newspapers. Following the death of her son, she became a member of a regional health planning council funded by the National Cancer Institute. That council reviewed a number of options to improve cancer care and selected hospice as an approach to receive additional study.

As chairman of a hospice education committee, Ms. Redmond worked with the head of the education department at a local hospital and a community college professor who taught a course titled “Death and Dying.” Following her presentations to the news media, hospital medical staffs, and service organizations, a hospice was founded in her area in 1978.

In 1979, Ms. Redmond taught a class called “How To Get Published” for a community college, and then worked as an assistant in a museum’s publications department.

Following a year of retirement in 1994, Ms. Redmond spent the next five years writing this book. She is a resident of New York State. In addition to writing, she enjoys playing bridge, exercising, and visiting her three children and four grandchildren in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland.