Cancer Survivorship

"A diagnosis of cancer provokes myriad responses in patients, chief among them the question: "how long do I have to live?" Increasingly, the answer to that question is not one of months or years, but decades. While there are now nearly 10 million people in the United States who have recovered or are currently recovering from cancer (increased from three million in 1971), the unique challenges encountered by survivors are often met with uncertainity by even the most seasoned physicians, nurses, and clinical social workers because of a lack of formal guidelines for post-treatment care and follow-up. Cancer Survivorship: Today and Tomorrow provides much-needed information on how to best serve this community of patients. Written by experts in the field, many of the them cancer survivors themselves, each chapter leads the reader through the unique medical and psychosocial aspects of recovery and survivorship in many primary sites including Childhood Cancers, Hodgkin’s Disease, Testicular, Gynecological, Breast, Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Transplant (AML,ALL, Lymphoma). Additional chapters cover survailence, second malignancies, psychosocial rehabilitation, employment and job discrimination, sexual and reproductive dysfunction, and advocacy. Cancer Survivorship is designed to be a complete resource for all members of the patient care team, providing a strong basis for the ongoing treatment of cancer survivors"--Publisher's description.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.