Dreams turn into nightmares and back again into dreams in this book, an open, clearly written, and honest description of the journey Eliza Livingston and her body went through at the behest of colon cancer. Each chapter is ushered in with a dream, some terrifying, some comforting, but the reader is quickly anchored in the painfully clear details of seeking and receiving medical treatment. From having to convince doctors that she was more than a lady with a stomachache to playfully naming her stoma “Stella,” and making it one of the characters from A Streetcar Named Desire, Eliza Livingston makes it clear why the word “living” is part of her name. She shares her real emotions, fears of rejection by medical staff, worries about her worried family and friends.
We are all of us social creatures, more like ants than eagles, needing social contact for our very survival in addition to our well-being. Yet the diagnosis (and treatment) of cancer often brings with it social isolation, pulling us from our friends, family, and work, making us feel a pariah, unwelcome among people who live the fantasy that they are immune to disease and death. Add to that the burden of having a colostomy, with worry that at any moment it could reveal itself through odor or leakage, and social withdrawal is a natural response. By writing this book, Eliza makes it clear to us that she is not ashamed of her cancer, her fear, her stoma named Stella. And she sends a clear message to other patients that they should not be ashamed either. She transforms this cancer experience from the awful to the everyday by taking us through her everyday experiences.
I have conducted research on the provision of emotional support for cancer patients for 25 years, running groups for most of those years, and listening to cancer patients help one another. It is clear to me that a kind of “social glue” quickly develops. Patients in the same boat speak one another’s language, help one another through difficult times, find ways, as Eliza does, to joke about the grimmest things, and find new meaning in their lives as they face their own mortality. One might think that facing such fears, of pain, of dying, of death, would be demoralizing. Rather, we have found it to be remoralizing, helping cancer patients put their illnesses into perspective by seeing their lives in a different way, given meaning by the relationships they make and sustain, the ways they can help one another. This book is written in that spirit, and will be helpful to those facing cancer, and their families and friends. Smiles of recognition will cross your face as you read this book, as will pangs of fear and sadness. It will remind you that cancer is a human experience, not just a physical one.
David Spiegel, MD
Willson Professor in the School of Medicine
Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences
Medical Director, Center for Integrative Medicine
Author of Living Beyond Limits and Group Therapy for Cancer Patients
