Excerpt from the Author's Introduction:
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September, 2001. I was
thirty-six. From the day of the biopsy to the last day of my radiation
treatment the following March, strangers loomed closer
than they ever had before. Doctors palpated my breasts, entered
examining rooms briskly, eyes averted, spoke to me at a slant.
Anonymous co-workers promised to pray for me. Distant acquaintances
exclaimed over how brave I was. Cancer survivors handed
me stuffed animals and pink ribbon pins. I resented the attention
of these strangers and was grateful for it. Their skills and their treatments
were making me sick and they were saving my life.
Several months after I’d completed my treatment, I read a
newspaper article describing a former Miss America’s visit to the
chemotherapy suite of a local hospital. I was stunned. Though the
patients were apparently grateful to her, I was outraged for them, at
this outlandish violation of their privacy. What would I have done,
I wondered? Nothing, I supposed. I would have been so taken off
guard by this stranger among strangers (though she was the only
one with a tiara), so unprepared for such a bizarre apparition, and
so focused on surviving that I would have shut down. That’s when
this novel’s narrator appeared. She, too, was a stranger to me, but
one I wanted to get to know. Are You a Survivor? is her story.
Karen Condon |
