Living in the Lightning: A Cancer Journal

by Natalie Robins

November 27, 1995: Late this afternoon I was diagnosed with cancer. I learned that I had a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma called 'malt,' for mucous-associated lymphoid tissue.' My oncologist, J. Gregory Mears, M.D., said that mine 'was not a bad story,' because my tumors were 'indolent,' slow-growing. Not a bad story? Doesn't just about everyone know that non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma is incurable? I have incurable cancer." So begins Natalie Robin's journal, first serialized in Self magazine, now compiled and expanded in Living in the Lightning. Robins writes frankly, with grace and realism, of her personal journey of learning to live with cancer. Her candid observations, reactions, and emotions throughout her diagnosis and treatment hit home, as she asks questions all of us might when faced with such appalling
* How should I tell my mother?
* Will my husband remarry after I die?
* What should I wear to chemotherapy?
* What would happen if I jumped off the table during radiation treatment?
* Can I ever forget I have cancer? Robins's warm and sincerely uplifting portrait of quiet courage will give encouragement to the millions of people with cancer, and the millions more who love them.

103 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

Natalie Robins has published nine books, four of which are volumes of poetry published by the legendary Alan Swallow Press. Her first nonfiction book, Savage Grace, coauthored with Steven M.L. Aronson, won an Edgar Award for the best fact-based crime book published in 1985, and was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore. Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom of Expression was the winner of the 1992 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, as well as a New York Times "Notable Book of 1992." Sherwin B.Nuland, MD called The Girl Who Died Twice: The Libby Zion Case and the Hidden Hazards of Hospitals, published in 1995, a book that "will bring new reportorial and literary standards to its genre." Copeland’s Cure: Homeopathy and the War between Conventional and Alternative Medicine, was published in 2005. The Washington Post called it “an absolutely dazzling account.” Robins, also the author of Living in the Lightning, which won the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's 1999 Chairman's Citation Award, lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York, with her husband, the writer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. They have two grown children. She is working on a biography of the literary and social critic Diana Trilling, to be published in 2015.

- from her website

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but sweet, this book validated many of my own feelings as I go through treatment. Written by a wonderful piet who is also the mom of an old school friend.