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"Perhaps I should have realized that cancer runs in my family. After all, three grandparents and my father and brother perished from this disease. Yet, when I received my colorectal cancer diagnosis, I was surprised. I never expected to be primarily identified as a cancer patient. Following a typical combination of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and more chemo, I was presumably cancer-free when my post-treatment scans looked clean. Nonetheless, within a year I received a terminal diagnosis; cancer had metastasized in my lungs. Thus began my year as a dead woman--a time of chaotic emotions, new priorities, and rapid-fire plans and changes. Expecting the unexpected became a theme in my life, but the things that turned out to be most shocking are social, familial, and even my expectations about what is realistic for a dead woman to be or do."
Preconceptions about a terminal cancer diagnosis frequently are based on popular culture depictions of cancer and dying, which can be misleading as a guide for knowing what to expect when you're expecting to die. This memoir provides one woman's often-irreverent, pop culture-illustrated guide to life that deconstructs some common preconceptions about living with a terminal diagnosis.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
¿1.¿Living the Dream/Fearing the Wake-up Call
¿2.¿Getting (and Getting Over) the News
¿3.¿The Power of Friendship
¿4.¿Who Tells My Story?
¿5.¿Packing My Bags-and My Travel Schedule
¿6.¿Taking Care of Business
¿7.¿Who Am I?
¿8.¿Abnormal as the New Normal: When I Am Old, I Will Be "Purple"
¿9.¿Great (or Not-So-Great) Expectations-Mine and Everyone Else's
10.¿Gratitude More Than Grief: Defying Expectations
11.¿The End Is Nigh
Works Cited
Index
About the author
The late Lynnette Porter was a professor in the Humanities and Communication Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. She wrote extensively on television and film.
