Pale Girl Speaks

Books are my escape. They captivate me, they teach me, they take me away from whatever is happening in my life, and they don't judge. Last week I decided to read a book titles "Pale Girl Speaks," about a young woman who was diagnosed with melanoma at 25. I thought this was a great book, and I highly recommend it.

Here was my review on Goodreads.com:

This was a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a loved one with the disease, or just wants to understand cancer from the perspective of a woman in her mid-twenties. I am only 5 months removed from my own melanoma diagnosis, and 4 months removed from my surgery, so some of the book was difficult to read. It was nice though to read about another young person dealing with this disease (I turned 27 1.5 weeks prior to my diagnosis), and I learned some things from the author. The most emotional part of the book for me was definitely the beginning, when the author was able to put into words exactly how I felt when I heard the news:

"I have cancer I have cancer I have cancer. I need to say it one more time. I have cancer...Okay. I'm just going to sit here in my den with my dog at my feet...it's that word that's bothering me so much....The one...ya know, the "c"-word..."That word" always seemed fairly easy to say when I'd used it in stories about other people. Stories about older people...It was just another word. It's just another word when you're talking about someone else. But now, I don't have..that word. I just can't.

It's so weird. I'm sitting here on my couch and everything around me looks the same as always...yet I feel like everything is so completely different. I feel like a completely different person than I did 10 minutes ago."

Reading this brought tears to my eyes as I remembered my own emotions and thoughts when I heard the news. It's difficult to explain to someone how it feels to be diagnosed with cancer, but this managed to capture almost exactly what I felt. I almost want to give this to some of my friends so they understand what it's like to get that call. 

The author takes you on a journey and leaves nothing out, which is as it should be. Melanoma is a terrible disease, and one that doesn't go away once the cancerous mole is removed. In fact, reading about the woman whose melanoma had spread who wouldn't sign up for additional treatment really bothered me and made me think. What would I do if I was ever in that situation? While I haven't turned to alcohol, I can completely understand why someone would. Especially with the worries about family members also having the disease. There are many parts of this story that don't parallel my journey, but it was still interesting to read. Her relationships with her husband and parents were fun to read too, though I feel terrible about her father.

The best part of this book for me has to be in the author's note:

"I can now say...there is no real way to move past a cancer diagnosis. To move past something evokes a sense of finality, and unfortunately, with cancer, there is no actual endgame...except the inevitable. Staying proactive about one's health requires awareness and constant vigilance...Fighting cancer is a continuous battle. The battle may not be raging every moment or in the forefront of one's mind every hour of every day, but it's never far behind. It's there, kinda wandering around, poking it's ugly head into and out of the action. Yes, melanoma is part of my history, but it is also my present and my future, and that I have come to accept."

Cancer is now a part of me, and I can't ever forget it. I am thinking of traveling this summer, and part of my thought process is how much I will be in the sun. That isn't something I would have really worried about last year, and now I think of it constantly. I feel like I need to get special clothes to run in, and that the beach is now off limits, and that if I ever get married, a beach trip will not be part of my honeymoon. Who knew one mole could change my life?

In any case, this was a great book. I also now have a question for my dermatologist based on something I read in the book, so not only was it good to read for catharsis and therapeutic reasons, but it might have led to a medical change for me too. I guess I'll find out in a month, at my next quarterly dermatologist appointment.