Ambiguous Area

"I'm grieving for my own soft, wobbly, small, individual breasts all over again. Three years of breastfeeding, 51 years old, they were nothing to write home about. But I miss them dreadfully," says Caroline, a breast cancer patient.

In After Breast Cancer: Answer to the Questions You're Afraid to Ask (Patient-Centered Guides, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc, 196 pages, softcover, $14.95, 0-596-50783-6), Musa Mayer, a consultant with the Food and Drug Administration and breast cancer survivor, discusses with women their thoughts concerning what they have lost, their fear of the future, and how they've changed. It is the transition between "after-treatment" to "survivor." Mayer clarifies the overwhelming risk information patients receive, and shares stories from others who have experienced treatment. Cancer survivor Francine, for example, now acknowledges that she has not control over life's events. It is this fatalistic approach that allows her to "do what I like to do, at all times."

After Breast Cancer ends encouragingly, focusing on life's essentials, and offering insight for grappling with the uncertain.