Smita Vyas Kumar reviews the book Coping with Cancer by Ramendra Kumar and shares what cancer survivors can take away from this little compendium of writing.
The book Coping with Cancer is authored by cancer survivor Mr. Ramendra Kumar who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. He is a writer, storyteller and an inspirational speaker and he brings all these talents to the fore in writing this book. It is a well-compiled book in a lucid engaging style that offers strategies for people who have been diagnosed with cancer and their caregivers on ways to cope with the disease, treatment and lead a satisfactory post treatment life.
A cancer diagnosis leaves the patient and the immediate family with a sense of fear and dread. The best way to understand how to deal with these feelings is by learning from the experiences of other people who have traversed this path and this book does that admirably well. All the chapters are largely made up of case studies of patients with different kinds of cancers at varying stages and how they and their caregivers coped with the illness. Hearing lived experiences gives the reader confidence, strength and an inner view to how actually can a person and the family deal with the disease.
The book is divided into different topics such as Learning to accept, Normalising, Investing in relationships and Pursuing a Passion. Each chapter has some practical information and quotations from other books and sources that are welcome guides to dealing with cancer.
The book is simply written and very easy to read. There is no technical jargon in it to confuse the reader. What it offers is hope on how cancer can be handled if the approach is right. There are no lists or instructions on things to follow such as say a meditation routine or nutritional charts or information. The reader has to glean and pick what works for them from the case studies. For instance, the example of how his daughter’s positivity and encouraging talk got his failing blood pressure to rise and eventually got him out of the ICU gives you a good idea on the power of positive thinking.
This is a slim book that can be read slowly to assimilate the lessons that each patient’s story can teach us. The book also captures key elements of the cancer journey shared by well known people like Manisha Koirala and Sanjay Dutt and these are enough to give one hope that living a happy and meaningful life beyond cancer is possible.
It also has a section on resources that families going through cancer can reference.
Link to the book: https://amzn.in/d/6ZEC0iD
Ramendra Kumar and his wife Madhavi have been contibutors to PatientsEngage and have sharing his lived experience with colorectal cancer in the following articles:
Positivity and Relationships Make Each Day Worth Living
My Husband had 3 Septic Shocks
