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Northern Lights: Summer Reading
By: Nancy Shamanna; Published: June 21, 2014 @ 9:02 am | Comments Disabled
It’s June, and the spring flowers have given way to colorful annuals and perennials, such as peonies, poppies, and delphiniums, in my garden. In addition, lilacs and crab apples are still in bloom. This is as close to paradise as it gets here.
After a busy spring of getting the lawn and flower beds tidied up and planted, it’s time to put out a lawn chair, pour an iced tea or lemonade, and find a good book to read. Summer reading has its own charm, especially if one can spend time outdoors.
Being an avid reader, I usually have stacks of books around. I have even started reading e-books on a tablet, which makes for easy reading while travelling. It also comes in so handy while waiting for appointments or while spending time at the hospital. Do any of you enjoy this new style of reading?
I have found that my tastes in reading have changed a bit since my myeloma diagnosis in 2009.
Some of the books I enjoyed since my diagnosis are related to cancer and other medical matters, since I wanted to know more about cancer and how others had coped with this diagnosis.
I realize that there are many books, both fiction and non-fiction, available about cancer, and that many of you may have done a lot of reading on the topic already.
On my list of suggested summer reading below, I therefore chose to review books that I enjoyed and that are perhaps lesser known in the hopes that you might enjoy reading some of them as well.
One of the very first books my husband Dilip and I read after my diagnosis was one that Dilip found in the medical school book store at the University of Calgary. We read it with great interest.
‘Treatment of Multiple Myeloma and Related Disorders’ by S. Vincent Rajkumar and Robert A. Kyle (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
This book is a collection of essays about different medical aspects of myeloma and its related diseases, such as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), solitary plasmacytoma, and light chain amyloidosis, written by different experts in the field. Myeloma-related topics discussed in the book include diagnosis, genetic classification, staging and risk stratification, treatment of newly diagnosed and relapsed/refractory patients, autologous and allogeneic (donor) transplants, maintenance therapy, treatment of myeloma-related complications, and diagnosis and treatment of myeloma bone disease,. Although this book is now five years old, I think it still has a lot of helpful information, especially in terms of understanding myeloma.
The following two books are written from the point of view of a caregiver of a cancer patient. I received them at an event last November that raised funds for research into the environmental causes of cancer. The authors of both books attended the event, and I had a chance to briefly speak with both of them.
‘Wild .. from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail’ by Cheryl Strayed (Vintage Books, New York, 2012).
Cheryl tells her own story of how she lost her mother to cancer when she was quite young, only 22 years old. Her mother, a 45 year-old vegetarian and physically fit woman, died, even though she had access to the best medical care available. This threw Cheryl into a tailspin, and her life became very dysfunctional. Eventually she decided to go on a long solo hike on the mountain crests of the Great Divide, from California to Oregon. Her story of the long hike and what she learned about herself was fascinating to me.
‘Up and Down’ by Terry Fallis (McClellan and Stewart, Toronto, 2012)
This is a fictional story of a young man whose mother is very ill with cancer. He changes jobs so that he can to be closer to her, even though his sister is actually doing most of the caregiving. One of the first projects he is assigned to at his new job at a public relations firm involves designing a contest to find an ordinary citizen to fly on a space mission. The winner of the contest is a lady in her seventies who lives in the far north of Canada and who seems like an unlikely candidate to be an astronaut. The young man goes to meet the woman who is able to demonstrate just how capable she is, despite her age. Fallis, who is Canadian, is a very witty writer, and the story is really enjoyable.
Also written by a Canadian, is the following collection of short stories:
‘Blood Letting and Miraculous Cures’ by Dr. Vincent Lam (Anchor Canada, 2005)
Dr. Lam, a practising Emergency Room physician, wrote a collection of 12 interwoven short stories about four young doctors, Fitz, Ming, Chen, and Sri. He follows their lives from getting into medical school, to their training in a busy emergency department at a major hospital. His characterizations are very compelling, and the stories he tells are harrowing at times. You could try just one story or read the whole book at once. This book won the Giller Prize in Canada, a major literary award.
I also enjoyed the following two interesting books about medical history:
‘Splendid Solution - Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio’ by Jeffrey Kluger (Penguin Books, 2004)
I thought I would include this interesting account of the development of the polio vaccine in the early 1950’s, since last month a story regarding myeloma and the measles virus went viral on the news. The book not only summarizes the science behind the development of the vaccine, but also delves into describing a bitter rivalry between two scientists, Dr. Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin. It’s a real page turner.
‘Dr. Folkman’s War’ by Robert Cooke (Random House, 2001)
Dr. Judah Folkman spent nearly 40 years studying a theory he had that cancer cells were nourished by nearby blood vessels. He termed the process ‘angiogenesis.’ A greater understanding of angiogenesis led to an amazing discovery that most of us myeloma patients have benefited from -- namely, that the process of cancer cells being nourished by nearby blood vessels could be reversed by immunomodulatory agents, such as thalidomide [1] (Thalomid).
According to the book, Dr. Bart Barlogie, a well-known myeloma specialist, was the first who tried thalidomide in myeloma patients, with startling success. Since then, additional immunomodulatory agents (Revlimid [2] (lenalidomide) and Pomalyst [3] (pomalidomide; Imnovid)) have been developed, but the principle remains the same.
Another problem in cancer treatment that Dr. Folkman worked on was how to administer chemotherapy continuously, rather than at very large and debilitating doses. So maybe this book is a ‘must read’ for us myeloma patients.
And finally, I have a suggestion for some lighter reading. Since I spend a lot of time with our ‘grand puppy,’ the following book caught my attention when I saw it at the library.
‘What A Difference a Dog Makes’ by Dana Jennings (Doubleday, 2010).
The author describes how helpful his little 12-year-old miniature poodle was to him as he was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for prostate cancer and his son was suffering from liver disease. It is a sweet, humorous book about his family life at that time. Did the dog care that the author had no hair?? Of course not….
I hope that this list inspires you to do some summer reading.
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The quotation for this month is from Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996), an American astronomer and popular science writer, who said: “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew each other. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”
Nancy Shamanna is a multiple myeloma patient and a columnist at The Myeloma Beacon. You can view a list of her columns here [4].
If you are interested in writing a regular column to be published by The Myeloma Beacon, please contact the Beacon team at .
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URL to article: https://myelomabeacon.org/headline/2014/06/21/northern-lights-summer-reading/
URLs in this post:
[1] thalidomide: https://myelomabeacon.org/resources/2008/10/15/thalidomide/
[2] Revlimid: https://myelomabeacon.org/resources/2008/10/15/revlimid/
[3] Pomalyst: https://myelomabeacon.org/tag/pomalyst/
[4] here: https://myelomabeacon.org/author/nancy-shamanna/
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