Fighting for Our Future: How Young Women Find Strength, Hope and Courage While Taking Control of Breast Cancer

by Beth Murphy (Author), Ann Curry (Foreword)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $13.65

  Breast cancer. We think of it as a disease for women over 40. We don't associate breast cancer with the young woman just graduating college. The woman starting her first job. The woman about to get married. The woman celebrating her first pregnancy. Yet breast cancer is the leading cause of death in U.S. women between the ages of 25 to 30. Every year, 10,000 U.S. women under 40 are diagnosed with breast cancer - and close to 1,500 of them will eventually die of it. At this very moment, some 250,000 U.S. women under the age of 40 are living with breast cancer. When a young woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, she and her loved ones immediately begin to search for information. This is a particular challenge for women under 40, since virtually all of the available information focuses on older women. On a medical level, young women need to know about issues of fertility and pregnancy; about how treatments and reconstructive surgeries will affect an active lifestyle; and about the possible long-term effects of various treatments. On a personal level, they need help coming to terms with issues of sexuality and dating, coping with the conflicts between a disease and the beginnings of a career, and processing the effects of a life-threatening illness on a new marriage or partnership. Fighting For Our Future is the only comprehensive survival guide for young breast cancer patients and their families - the only book that deals with the whole spectrum of issues faced by such women. When young women and their loved ones look for information, this is the only book they can turn to. Meanwhile, the book's engaging narrative style will appeal to an even broader audience that enjoys stories of hope and triumph while learning about larger medical and social issues.