Review by ML_Petrie -- Manifesto for a Cancer Patient

[ML_Petrie]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Manifesto for a Cancer Patient" by Colleen Huber, NMD.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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“We should all make our choices with eyes wide open” (pg. 184). Colleen Huber, NMD, has written Manifesto for a Cancer Patient to address the issue of individual sovereignty, specifically the individual sovereignty of cancer patients. Sovereignty cannot be exercised without the knowledge of what choices exist and what the implications of those choices might be. In the age of information, there is an overwhelming and indiscriminate number of texts and data on any given subject at the tips of our fingers, a person could be consumed and lost forever in a rabbit hole seeking and never finding any truths. I give this book 4 out of 4 stars because it is incredibly relevant, full of useful information and it is also well edited and does not require a medical degree to understand the contents.

“Cancer patients are frequently sucked into a machine, stripped of personal sovereignty, and most don’t stop to question it”. Originally published in 2009, this revised edition was released in 2017. Dr. Huber has created this text with the intention of providing information to cancer patients, information that might help an individual retain their sovereignty and make their choices with a higher degree of certainty and confidence. For those individuals who face a diagnosis of a fatal disease such as cancer, time becomes the most precious resource and taking time to investigate treatments is akin to playing Russian roulette, this book provides concise information and guides the reader through the most necessary sections.

Manifesto for a Cancer Patient focuses on cancer patients located primarily in the Western Hemisphere. Dr. Huber attempts to broaden her readers' understanding not only of cancer as a disease but of cancer as a business and as an industry. A daunting and politically and socially sticky subject, she sheds light in laymen’s terms, leaving a subtle trail of breadcrumbs to be followed by those with the desire to truly examine this part of our modern world with new eyes. If I could change one thing about this book it would be the author’s depth of exploration of the historical and political aspects of the cancer machine, though I understand that covering such topics would likely alienate a variety of readers and that would defeat her purpose.

This is a book that can be read several times over, leaving the reader with a new and deeper understanding of the subject matter after each read through. Dr. Huber is very clear about her purpose for writing this book and this purpose is clearly supported throughout its pages. The text is logically ordered, and grammatical errors are far and few between, in fact, the only errors that I was able to find were related to formatting and most likely a result of my chosen reading platform. Footnotes are used throughout the book, providing credible sources that the reader may further investigate themselves.

Manifesto for a Cancer Patient is a book that I wish that I had read five years ago when I faced my own diagnosis of an advanced stage breast cancer. I was sucked into a machine because I didn’t know that there was a choice. As the single parent of a young child, I was very scared and easily persuaded to undergo a very intensive chemotherapy treatment that would last for the better part of a year, to be followed by intense radiation treatments and disfiguring surgeries as well. I am still haunted by the side effects, fatigue, and heart palpitations and early onset osteoporosis. I was essentially aged by thirty years, giving me the ability to empathize with my grandparents on a whole new level. This, I was told, is the price of life.

I would recommend this book especially to cancer patients, whether they face a new diagnosis, or they are in remission, there are alternatives to explore and chemotherapy is not the only choice. I think that family members of cancer patients could certainly appreciate and benefit from many portions of this book as well, as much as cancer is a diagnosis given to an individual it is not something that can be faced entirely alone and it has a family-wide impact. A patient's support system is as critical as any other part of the treatment plan. I believe that the chapters containing the data sets would be of particular interest to students taking data analytics classes. I would not recommend this book to any person who has a closed mind or believes that their physician's word is next to God's.

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Manifesto for a Cancer Patient
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[Stephanie Elizabeth]

Great review! I also really enjoyed this book.
Thank you for sharing your personal battle with cancer (I wish you had read this book sooner as well) and I wish you good health going forward.