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Zusatztext Larry King One of the most important books I have ever read. Informationen zum Autor Laura Landro is a senior editor in charge of entertainment, media, and marketing coverage at The Wall Street Journal. She won the National Print Journalism Award from the Leukemia Society of America for her October 24, 1996, Wall Street Journal article, "A Survivor's Tale." She lives in New York City. Klappentext "Survivor" is Landro's personal account of efforts to arm herself with facts, learn the pertinent medical jargon, and acquire a complete understanding of the options available to fight her cancer. Packed with information about the terrifying, bewildering world of modern medicine, this book is at a call to action every patient should heed. Chapter One: THE BAD NEWS On the afternoon of August 20, 1991 -- my thirty-seventh birthday -- I was in my apartment in New York City, trying to muster some energy to celebrate. For weeks, I had been feeling increasingly tired and out of sorts. My parents were in town to take me out to dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant, and the following day we were planning to drive to Long Island for a family vacation at the beach, a period of rest that I hoped would do me some good. Too bad I'm not there already, I thought. I suddenly had such a crushing sense of fatigue that I decided to lie down for a few minutes. Three hours later, it took all the strength I had just to get up off the bed again. Something has got to be wrong with me, I thought to myself as I stared at my pale face in the mirror, trying with makeup to cover the dark circles under my eyes. But what was it that was wrong? Had I been staying out too late, not taking good enough care of myself, working too hard? My job -- managing a dozen reporters and writing about the entertainment industry for The Wall Street Journal -- entailed more than its share of stress, but not enough to make me feel this tired. If anything, life at the newspaper was energizing; I did my best work on the adrenaline of deadlines. I had always been in good health. And though I was no athlete, after years of regular exercise, I had never been in better physical condition. Like most people, I had my share of modern day health paranoia, illogically wondering if a bad headache could be a brain tumor. Each of my father's four sisters had battled breast cancer. That put me in a higher risk category, and I worried about it. But when you came right down to it, I regarded illness and disease as the curse of the old and infirm, a vague concern for the distant future. I decided whatever was ailing me now must be some temporary aberration, a virus, something I would soon shake off. The next day we arrived in Southampton to stay at a friend's oceanfront house. I looked forward to being outside every day -- riding my bike, running, swimming laps in the heated pool. But when I tried to exercise, the effort left me winded, gasping for breath. I complained to my mother that I had never felt so run down. As a nurse, she had always been a better diagnostician than the average mother, and she, too, was worried. "You look so pale and tired," she told me as we walked along the beach one morning. "Why don't you see a doctor as soon as you get back home?" I promised her I would, but after I returned to work in September, things got so hectic that I put off making an appointment. I figured if I ignored it, maybe it would go away. But it didn't. In fact, some mornings, I felt as if I were nailed to my bed, unable to shake off sleep without great effort. There was a nagging ache in my left side that sometimes intensified into a sharp pain. A surge of that adrenaline would get me through the pressure-cooker afternoon deadlines at the office, but I was so spent at night that I would often have to lie down in the back seat of a taxi on the way home. As if I nee...
