The Cancer Chronicles

by George Johnson

[wyvernfriend]

This was one of the easiest books on cancer for me to read. I found it informative and in certain ways comforting. The concept that there's more cancer these days because we're not dying from other diseases and that there are dinosaur skeletons with signs of cancer.

I was a cancer patient, I was lucky, I responded in a textbook fashion to chemotherapy regime I was put on. My lottery ticked may have been stamped by the glandular fever I had earlier in my life (apparently all patients who have Hodgkins Lymphoma had glandular fever but not all people who get glandular fever get Hodgkins), by the genetics that link geeks in our family with cancer (stomach - grandfather; liver - uncle) or the environmental issues with having worked late shifts and living for a few years in a bustling city centre. Whatever happened I had cancer, some books make me very stressed but this book reasured me that there are people working on this and trying to find solutions to ensure that future generations won't suffer from this.

Through the science he also weaves the story of his wife's cancer. Her treatment and the aftermath and the afterword including his brother's cancer. It's touching in parts and you can see his path to try to understand this while his wife is going through all the trauma of treatment and testing and heartbreak. You can see how he's trying to understand this and trying, in the face of a situation where he has no power or agency over this thing that's happening.

I found it a compelling read and would recommend it to almost everyone.