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Recent additions to the

Patient and Family Library

Treatment / Types of Cancer

Women's Cancers: How to Prevent Them,

How to Treat Them, How to Beat Them

Experienced oncology nurses address all the issues surrounding women’s cancers. This edition offers new data on the long-term effects of cancer and its treatment, as well as updates on genetic influences, environmental factors, and analysis of complementary and alternative therapies. 70 black-and-white illustrations are included.

Everyone's Guide to Cancer Therapy

Everyone’s Guide to Cancer Therapy: How Cancer Is Diagnosed, Treated, and Managed Day to Day relies on more than 100 oncology specialists to update this cancer resource.
This book guides cancer patients and their caregivers through diagnosis, treatment, and supportive care. Every chapter includes information concerning cancer treatment, including:

• Information on recently approved "targeted" therapies for various cancer types
• The newest strategies in cancer diagnosis and prevention
• Cancer biology: translating scientific discoveries into meaningful advances for patients
• Supportive care and complementary approaches

 

Chronic Illness

Handbook for Mortals:

Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness

Handbook for Mortals is for those who wish to approach the final years of life with greater awareness of what to expect and greater confidence about how to make the end of our lives a time for growth, comfort, and meaningful reflection. Including insight from a variety of experts from nursing, hospice, counseling, and the arts, this book provides equal measures of practical information and gentle insight. Readers will learn what decisions they will need to face, where to look for help, how to ease pain and other symptoms, what to expect with specific diseases, and how the health-care system operates. Equally important to this practical information are the personal stories included here of how people have come to terms with dying, faced their fears, and made important choices.

 

Caregiving

When the Focus is on Care

The goal of palliative care - care other than medical care that addresses the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of the seriously ill patient, as well as the needs of their caregivers and loved ones - is to help people with cancer and their families experience the best quality of life possible throughout the course of the disease. "When the Focus is on Care" explains how people with cancer, especially those in later stages of the disease, can benefit from palliative care. The book provides the information, support, and tools people need to cope and live well with cancer, even when the disease is not responsive to treatment.

100 Questions & Answers about

Caring for Family or Friends with Cancer

Whether you are a friend or relative of someone suffering from cancer, this book offers help. Providing both the professional healthcare giver's and patient's views, this book gives practical answers to your questions about treatment options, home care, insurance, quality of life and more.

Cancer Caregiving A to Z :

An At-Home Guide for Patients and Families

Caregivers are problem solvers and often need on the job training to come up with solutions in the unique world of cancer caregiving. Whether caring for yourself at home or providing care for a loved one, this quick reference guide can help you improve quality of care and quality of life. Organized in a straight-forward A to Z format, the book covers more than four dozen critical topics, from Anxiety to Weight Changes, in clear, easy-to-understand language.

 

Coping

What You Really Need to Know about Cancer

What You Really Need to Know about Cancer explains in a clear, jargon-free style what cancer is, how it is caused, and how it behaves. Detailed sections about all of the major types of cancer describe how each may cause symptoms, what factors are important in progress, and what treatment is available. This fully revised and updated edition includes all of the latest information the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Live Strong: Inspirational Stories from Cancer Survivors-from Diagnosis to Treatment and Beyond

Covering a wide range of subjects, from grief to spousal relationships, employment discrimination to coping with medical bills, infertility to fear of recurrence, survivors share their experiences and speak candidly about how cancer has impacted their lives. While heartbreaking at times, these powerfully honest stories are ultimately uplifting and extremely reassuring to patients and their families. They offer the wisdom and hope that only survivors can give. LiveStrong is a remarkable testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know

When we hear that someone close to us has been diagnosed with cancer, we want nothing more than to comfort them with words of hope, support, and love. But sometimes we don’t know what to say or do, and don’t feel comfortable asking. With sensitive insights and thoughtful anecdotes, HELP ME LIVE provides a personal yet thoroughly researched account of words and actions that are most helpful.

After Cancer Treatment

Dr. Julie Silver offers a holistic approach to healing after cancer treatment, one that uses clinical medicine as a springboard for describing a variety of approaches that can lead to better quality of life for cancer survivors. Silver, a cancer survivor herself and a physiatrist at Harvard University, draws on her professional and personal experience to help other survivors feel more well, get stronger, and develop an emotional base to help them cope with their new status as cancer survivor.

The Human Side of Cancer:

Living with Hope, Coping with Uncertainty

For more than twenty years, Dr. Holland has pioneered the study of psychological problems of cancer patients and their families -- whom she calls "the real experts." In The Human Side of Cancer, she shares what she has learned from all of them about facing this life-threatening illness and what truly helps along the cancer journey. This book inspires hope -- through stories of the simple courage of ordinary people confronting cancer.

Cancer is a Word Not a Sentence

Renowned medical oncologist Dr. Robert Buckman takes a step-by-step look at coping with a diagnosis and moving forward with life. Cancer Is a Word, Not a Sentence is not a dry compilation of cancer facts and biology. Instead, it is a guide for use in the real world. It shows the reader what the diagnosis means, what the tests are all about, how to weigh the benefits and risks of various treatment options, and how to cope with side-effects, uncertainties and emotional ups and downs. Additional topics include: Why clinical trials are worth considering; how to talk about cancer with family and friends; how to talk to your medical team; how to maintain quality of life; and where to get more help.

Help Me to Heal

Patients, caregivers and family members can learn to communicate their needs to doctors and staff so that, through the creation of a healing team, a common healing goal takes shape.

Return to Wholeness: Embracing Body, Mind and Spirit in the Face of Cancer

David Simon breaks new ground with the innovative, holistic mind-body approaches developed at the Chopra Center for Well Being. The guiding theme in this book is wholeness, as Dr. Simon demonstrates to readers the value of integrating the best of traditional and alternative medicines with ancient Eastern, Ayurvedic principles and practices in order to forge the most effective path to wellness.

Anticancer: A New Way of Life

All of us have cancer cells in our bodies. But not all of us will develop cancer. Fifteen years ago, a frightening series of tests revealed that Dr. David Servan-Schreiber had a lethal cancer of the brain. He received conventional treatment and the cancer went into remission, but he then suffered a relapse. As a physician, researcher and former director of the Center of Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Servan-Schreiber had access to both the latest cancer research and to a wealth of information on new approaches to treatment and prevention. He has now lived cancer-free for seven years. The approach he presents in Anticancer highlights a combination of the best conventional treatments with often overlooked alternative therapies.

What Helped Get Me Through:

Cancer Survivors Share Wisdom and Hope

Here in one volume are hundreds of invaluable suggestions, words of support, encouragement, and hope, generously shared by survivors, medical experts, and celebrities from around the world. These are the things the docs don’t have time to tell us.

Cancer. How will I Get Through This?

Stories of Hope from Survivors and Caregivers

This book addresses the hard-hitting topics of concern to survivors and caregivers with an attitude of hope. The courageous individuals profiled in this book represent a variety of ages, occupations and cancer types. This book will benefit and be an inspiration to cancer patients and their loved ones.

It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

The champion cyclist recounts his diagnosis with cancer, the grueling treatments during which he was given a less than twenty percent chance for survival, his surprising victory in the 1999 Tour de France, and the birth of his son.

Kitchen Table Wisdom

As a physician, a professor of medicine, a therapist, and a long- term survivor of chronic illness, Dr. Rachel Remen, author of the inspirational classic "Kitchen Table Wisdom," has a unique perspective on healing. Here are the passages, quotes, and stories from "Kitchen Table Wisdom" that have affected her fans. The result is a guide to inner healing that everyone will cherish, and such spiritual issues as suffering, meaning, love, faith, and miracles that everyone can learn from and live by.

 

Sexuality

Intimacy After Cancer: A Woman's Guide

This book gives you all the tools you need for restoring intimacy after cancer. It teaches you how to rebuild your self-esteem after cancer by changing the way you think about your body, making intimacy possible and important again after a physically devastating disease

Saving Your Sex Life: A Guide for Men with Prostate Cancer

Dr. John Mulhall guides the reader through the basics of male sexuality, explains the role of testosterone, the functions of the prostate, and the common difficulties men encounter when disease strikes. In plain language, this book spells out the causes and symptoms of prostate disease and diseases of the lower urinary tract and the approach to deal with the aftermath of treatment.

Intimacy after Breast Cancer: A Practical Guide to Dealing with Your Body, Relationships and Sex

Two-time breast cancer survivor Maisano openly and honestly discusses the sensitive issues of self-esteem, body image, and sexuality to remind women that love and intimacy do not have to end with a breast cancer diagnosis.

Gynaecological Cancer Guide: Sex, Sanity and Survival

The Gynaecological Cancer Guide: Sex, Sanity, and Survival, is for women with gynaecological cancer, their caregivers, family, colleagues and medical support teams. The book provides information on the critical issues that gynaecological cancer survivors commonly experience, along with information on the range of gynecological cancers and the treatment options available. Survivor interviews, with their frank and honest comments, are peppered throughout the book and are of great help to the reader.

Breaking the Silence on Cancer and Sexuality

This new handbook takes a clinical approach to the topic of sexuality and cancer. Examining the literature and research, the text covers human sexuality in the context of cancer including how specific cancers impact sexuality, how cancer affects the family and the individual demonstrates how specific treatments affect sexual functioning and provides tools for healthcare providers.

Sexuality and Fertility after Cancer

Cancer survivors are discovering their potential for renewed sexuality, which many may never have thought possible. This new book explains your options and gives you the accurate, up-to-date information. Now you can make the decisions that are best for you based on recent medical advances and the newest perspectives. This unique guide covers: The kinds of sexual problems both men and women are likely to face after treatment — and state-of-the-art solutions; the most effective infertility treatments; how to assess the risks of pregnancy; and the latest information on body image, low sex drive, performance anxieties, medications, sex aids, and reconstructive surgery. Special topics include: sex after breast or prostate cancer, and the specific problems facing gays, singles, and survivors of childhood cancers.

Woman Cancer Sex

Sexuality after a diagnosis of cancer is a real issue for women and their partners. In her new book, "Woman Cancer Sex", Dr. Anne Katz explains the changes that many women with cancer experience and offers practical and compassionate advice on how to handle these changes. Each chapter describes the experience of a woman with a particular kind of cancer and a variety of related problems, including loss of libido, physical pain, and struggles communicating with a partner. Dr. Katz details the physical aspect of sexuality; highlighting the different feelings a woman might have during her experience, and some strategies women can really use in their daily lives. Also included is specific information for the partner.

 

Spirituality

The Last Lecture (Pausch)

Based on the extraordinary final lecture by Carnegie Mellon University professor Pausch, given after he discovered he had pancreatic cancer, this moving book goes beyond the now-famous lecture to inspire readers to live each day with purpose and joy.

Where is God when It Hurts?

Where is God when It Hurts focuses on the role of pain in God's plan for life and how we can respond to it. Using examples from the Bible and from his own experiences, Yancey looks at pain--physical, emotional, and spiritual--and helps us understand why we suffer.

Animals as Healers and Teachers

Susan Chernak McElroy credits her astounding triumph over cancer to the love of the animals in her life. In Animals as Teachers & Healers she shares her remarkable story along with true stories from others who have been touched by the loving energies of animals. This book invites us to reconnect with the boundless gifts of joy, wisdom, and deep healing that flow from our relationship with the animal kingdom.

The Places that Scare You

We always have a choice, Pema Chödrön teaches: We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This book teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

When Things Fall Apart

A collection of talks she gave between 1987 and 1994, the book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties. Chödrön discusses: Using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage; communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down; practices for reversing habitual patterns; methods for working with chaotic situations; ways for creating effective social action.

The Dark Night of the Soul

A distinguished psychiatrist, spiritual counsellor and bestselling author shows how the dark sides of the spiritual life are a vital ingredient in deep, authentic, healthy spirituality. May argues that only the honest, sometimes difficult encounters with what Christian spirituality has called 'the dark night of the soul' can lead to true spiritual wholeness.

Can You Drink the Cup?

Exploring the deep spiritual impact of the question Jesus asked his friends James and John, Nouwen reflects upon the metaphor of the cup, using the images of holding, lifting, and drinking to articulate the basics of the spiritual life. Nouwen's exploration of Jesus' challenging question has the power to pierce your heart, expand your spiritual horizons, and radically change your life.

Praying Our Goodbyes

Letting go of what we cherish is one of the hardest things we ever have to do. And that includes letting go of jobs, homes, relationships, good health, illusions, self-importance, and even loved ones. But unless we learn to say goodbye as well as hello, we are crippled by our suffering.

This tender and realistic book can be your personal guide to accepting our inevitable goodbyes even as it reminds us that when we are suffering most deeply, the seed of hope still lives within us. Discover the emotions that goodbyes awaken and turn to the twenty-four specific prayers designed to help you deal with nearly every imaginable kind of loss.

Our Greatest Gift

Henri Nouwen shares his own experiences with aging, loss, grief, and fear, gently and eloquently revealing the gifts that the living and dying can give to one another. A meditation on dying and caring, Our Greatest Gift gently and eloquently reveals the gifts that the living and dying can give to one another.

 

Nutrition

Goes Down Easy

Good nutrition during treatment is key to maintaining strength and energy, as well as aiding in recovery.
Inspired by patients' requests for easy, practical recipes to deal with certain nutrition problems, the author worked with six dietitians at Princess Margaret Hospital to create a practical guide for people living with cancer, their families and caregivers. Some of the most frequently asked questions are "What should I eat? What should I avoid eating? and "How will I manage meals?"

Each chapter includes advice from dietitians from Princess Margaret Hospital specializing in cancer, a sample meal plan, suggestions to maintain weight and strength, to keep well hydrated, and to ensure meal plans include enough calories, protein, and fluid. Because cancer patients may experience extreme fatigue, recipes require no fancy ingredients, extra shopping or preparation time.

ACS Complete Guide to Nutrition for Cancer Patients

This guide offers the latest information to those seeking reliable information about nutritional support for people with cancer. Also discussed is the role of nutritional choices before, during, and after cancer therapy and how they can help bolster energy levels, strengthen the immune system, fight off infection, and minimize the side effects of treatment. Charts, information on special diets, and level-headed advice about dietary supplements make this a valuable tool for the cancer journey.

Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer

Foods That Fight Cancer helps us to understand the cancer-fighting properties of food. How do we learn to incorporate the health properties of green tea, dark chocolate, and red wine into our daily diet? The authors have teamed up with professional chefs to create Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer.

Featuring 160 specially created, delicious recipes - including Cuban Black Bean Soup, Scallop and Strawberry Rosettes, Maghreb Couscous, Sweet Chestnut Brownies - and packed with information on the latest research developments in the field, this gorgeous, full-colour.

Foods that Fght Cancer

Current research shows that elements in particular foods may significantly reduce the risk of cancer in healthy individuals and slow its progress in those already suffering from the disease. We can help ourselves and our families through healthy eating. But the information coming through the popular media is confusing and often hard to understand. Just what should we be eating and in what combinations? Do all cancer-fighting foods work the same way? Do they all fight all kinds of cancers?

The authors describe the science of food and which properties of particular foods are the active cancer-fighting elements. They explain how different foods work to protect the body against different cancers and show which foods will be most effective. By understanding the science behind these therapeutic benefits, we come to realize not only why it is so critical to add these foods to our diet, but how easily it can be done.

Easy to Swallow, Easy to Chew

Delicious and nourishing recipes that are easy to eat and swallow. The Easy-to-Swallow, Easy-to-Chew Cookbook presents a collection of more than 150 nutritious recipes that make eating enjoyable and satisfying for anyone who has difficulty chewing or swallowing. It also shares helpful tips and techniques to make eating easier for someone with head or neck cancer.

Eating Hints for Cancer Patients

Diet is an important part of your treatment for cancer. Eating the right kinds of foods during your treatment can help you feel better and stay stronger. The National Cancer Institute has prepared this book to help you learn more about your diet needs and how to manage eating problems. Eating well is extra important when your body is fighting disease. This book is mainly for patients who are still receiving cancer treatment. However, it also may be useful after you finish treatment. Pick it up any time you find that eating well is a challenge.

One Bite at a Time

A cookbook for cancer patients with more than 85 recipes, featuring full nutritional analysis and anecdotes from cancer survivors. Chef Rebecca Katz shares delicious, nourishing recipes for cancer patients featuring full nutritional analysis and anecdotes from cancer survivors. This book provides caretakers with a tangible way to nurture loved ones through easy-to-digest meals that offer flavor while boosting the immune system.

Eating Well, Living Well: An Every Day Guide for Optimum Health

Dr. Richard Béliveau and Dr. Denis Gingras discuss the powerful link between food and health including explanations of complex medicine and research. The authors discuss the impact of diet on obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer.

 

DVD

Soul of Healing (DVD)

Self-actualization specialist Deepak Chopra explores the connection between body and mind and helps viewers overcome negative thoughts to realize their true potential.

Gaiam: Yoga for Stress Release (DVD)

Yoga expert Suzanne Deason leads viewers through a gentle sequence of stretching exercises and relaxing poses, designed to soothe and energize both mind and body. Peaceful feelings and stress-relief are emphasized. The program includes a four-minute gentle stretch for relieving tension, a 13-minute session to enhance circulation and diminish stress, and ends with a three-minute period of deep relaxation, accompanied by quiet instrumental music.

 

Relaxation/Imagery/Meditation

Visions for Cancer Recovery:

A Guided Visualization and Health Meditation

Visions for Cancer Recovery strengthens the mind-body connection as a bridge between science, technology and the imagination. From the time of diagnosis, through any prescribed medical treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, and as part of health maintenance, Visions for Cancer Recovery is a companion program to watch again and again. The program is not a substitute for any prescribed medical treatments.

 

Alternative/Complementary Medicine

American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Therapies / ACS

Written for consumers, patients, and families seeking reliable information about nontraditional therapies, this is a quick and easy guide to the latest information about complementary and alternative methods most commonly available to people with cancer. A broad range of topics, such as herbs, vitamins, minerals, mind/body/spirit, diet and nutrition, physical touch, and biological methods are covered.

Mayo Clinic Book of Alternative Medicine

For the first time, leading medical experts at world-renown Mayo Clinic are publishing a book that surveys the most important and popular therapies, remedies, procedures and practices of natural medicine, delivering you the facts, based on clinical experience and current research and testing. The Mayo Clinic provides answers to the most pressing questions people have about the effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine, and when it is appropriate to use natural remedies to replace or in conjunction with traditional medicine.

Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative, Complementary and Conventional Therapies

Comprehensive Cancer Care includes reports on the most accepted and researched complementary and alternative practices, empowering advice for patients with clear action steps for speaking to doctors, and critical discussion of cutting-edge interventions.

Meditation for Optimal Health: How to Use Mindfulness and Breathing to Heal Your Body & Refresh Your Mind

Two of America’s most trusted healers share a practical introduction to the life-changing benefits of meditation. Through daily practice, they teach that you can harness the full potential of your mind, and use it to enrich every dimension of your daily experience. Listeners learn how meditation can actually unify the many related functions of the mind and body to help them start enjoying the best health of their lives.

Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook

The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook offers simple and easy-to-use, step-by-step instructions for using progressive relaxation, autogenics, self-hypnosis, visualization, mindfulness, acceptance, etc. Chapters also include "Facing Feelings," which focuses on mindfulness and acceptance, and "Coping with Anger."

 

Survivorship

Picking up the Pieces

There are over 11 million cancer survivors in North America, and every year doctors diagnose one million new cases. Most survivors emerge exhausted, struggling with fears, and uncertain of the future. Physical, emotional, and spiritual changes impact relationships and can leave people feeling overwhelmed. Survivors speak of needing to "pick up the pieces" of their lives once the struggle with cancer is over.

Practical, reassuring and informative, Picking Up the Pieces is based on 4 years of research and interviews with hundreds of survivors.

100 Questions & Answers about Life after Cancer

Whether you're a survivor yourself, or a loved one of a survivor, this book offers help. The text provides both the healthcare professional's and patient's views, 100 Questions & Answers About Life After Cancer: A Survivor's Guide gives you authoritative, practical answers to your questions. Written by experts in the field with insider advice from actual patients, this book is a valuable resource.

Death (About)

I Don’t Know What to Say: How to Help and Support Someone Who is Dying

When people we love are dying, we all too often are unable to help them - or even talk to them - or face our own conflicting feelings about the impending loss. Dr. Robert Buckman, a distinguished oncologist who was himself once diagnosed as having a fatal illness, confronts these questions:

• What should a patient be told about his or her illness?
• How can the patient's supporters cope with demands that may seem angry and irrational?
• What are the crucial differences between caring for a dying parent, spouse, or child?
• How can you help someone dying from AIDS, cancer, or a dementing illness?

How We Die

Through particular stories of dying -- patients, and of his own family -- he examines the seven most common roads to death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer''s, accidents, heart disease, and strokes, revealing the facets of death''s multiplicity.

 

General Information

Everyone's Guide to Cancer Supportive Care:

A Comprehensive Handbook for Patients and Their Families

Knowledge and information provide the greatest tools-and greatest comforts-for anyone fighting cancer or helping a family member or friend who is. The wide range of covered topics includes:

• Understanding cancer and its treatments
• Chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant side effects
• Stress and cancer
• The will to live
• Cancer and spirituality
• Sexuality
• Nutritional considerations

• Rehabilitation and fitness

Heart in the Wild

Writing with a passionate love and respect for the natural world, McElroy invites us to walk with her along the ancient four-footed path that leads through transformation into wholeness. These true stories and a host of others speak to the necessity for ritual, the value of generosity, and how to deal with essential life changes by reconnecting to the earth and its rhythms.

Ethical Wills

Having a living will informs both family and doctors of your medical treatment wishes. Creating an ethical will communicates personal values, beliefs, blessings and advice to relatives to ensure that the way in which you'd like to spend your last days will be respected. It can be more meaningful to friends and family than any material possession you bequeath to them. Together, living and ethical wills ensure that your wishes and hopes are 'on the record', not to be lost, ignored or forgotten.

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