This book provides a contemporary and comprehensive examination of cancer in everyday life, drawing on qualitative research with people living with cancer, their family members and health professionals. It explores the evolving and enduring affects of cancer for individuals, families and communities, with attention to the changing dynamics of survivorship, including social relations around waiting, uncertainty, hope, wilfulness, obligation, responsibility and healing. Challenging simplistic deployments of survivorship and drawing on contemporary and classical social theory, it critically examines survivorship through innovative qualitative methodologies including interviews, focus groups, participant produced photos and solicited diaries. In assembling this panoramic view of cancer in the twenty-first century, it also enlivens core debates in sociology, including questions around individual agency, subjectivity, temporality, normativity, resistance, affect and embodiment. A thoughtful account of cancer embedded in the undulations of the everyday, narrated by its subjects and those who informally and formally care for them, Survivorship: A Sociology of Cancer in Everyday Life outlines new ways of thinking about survivorship for sociologists, health and medical researchers and those working in cancer care settings.

Cancer patients face a daunting world of confusing information about treatment options. They may have heard of using integrative medicine to complement traditional care and alleviate both short- and long-term side effects of cancer treatments, but where do they locate accurate information on acupuncture, massage, yoga, and nutritional therapies? Survivorship: Living Well During and After Cancer provides up-to-date evidence-based information on available therapies from Dr. Barrie Cassileth, a leader in integrative cancer treatment and founder of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Cassileth will help patients begin to separate the facts from the hype when considering complementary medicine. A full listing of "anti-quackery" online resources is included.

"Chemo brain. Fatigue. Chronic pain. Insomnia. Depression. These are just a few of the ongoing, debilitating symptoms that plague some breast-cancer survivors long after their treatments have officially ended. After the Cure is a compelling read filled with fascinating portraits of more than seventy women who are living with the aftermath of breast cancer." "Having heard repeatedly that "the problems are all in your head," many don't know where to turn for help. The doctors who now refuse to validate their symptoms are often the very ones they depended on to provide life-saving treatments. Sometimes family members who provided essential support through months of chemotherapy and radiation don't believe them. Their work lives, already disrupted by both cancer and its treatment, are further undermined by the lingering symptoms. And every symptom serves as a constant reminder of the trauma of diagnosis, the ordeal of treatment, and the specter of recurrence." "Most narratives about surviving breast cancer end with the conclusion of chemotherapy and radiation, painting stereotypical portraits of triumphantly healthy survivors, women who not only survive but emerge better and stronger than before. After the Cure allows us to hear the voices of those who are silenced by the optimistic breast cancer culture, women who live with a broad array of health problems long after therapy ends. Here, at last, survivors step out of the shadows and speak compellingly about their real stories, giving voice to the complicated, often painful realities of life after the cure."--BOOK JACKET.

In the past, pregnancy after cancer was largely unheard of. Today, it is increasingly a possibility. Oncofertility has emerged as an interdisciplinary field bridging biomedical and social sciences, and examining issues regarding an individual’s fertility options, choice and goals in light of cancer diagnosis, treatment and survivorship. Written by leaders in this evolving field, the volume covers various aspects: medical, ethical and social.

Explores the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry and analyzes the social impact on women living with breast cancer -- the stereotypes and the stigmas.

Challenging a number of myths about living long term with or after cancer, this book offers new insights by delving into areas that are not usually spoken about. Written from a dual perspective- that of a psychologist who had breast cancer and who copes with the long-term effects of treatment - the book contests the assumption that the afflicted person will simply 'get better' or 'move through' to a better situation. Emotional and physical side-effects can worsen over time and people living beyond or with cancer often endure a mismatch between expectations and reality, because they have been told that life would be easier than it actually is. This can leave both those suffering longer term and those close to them confused and unprepared. Including testimonies with people who have had a cancer diagnosis and people in the medical profession, the book signposts ways that professionals may help and offers prompts for friends and relatives to have useful and open conversations with the person affected. It gives voice to many people who feel that their suffering is disputed and diminished by the prevailing narrative around recovery. Galgut includes discussion on relationships, work, trauma, fear of recurrence and the role of therapy. Giving an unflinchingly honest perspective, Living with the Long-Term Effects of Cancer sheds light on these struggles, in the belief that bringing this conversation to the forefront is key to improving life for those who are affected by cancer and who suffer longer term from its effects.

In Enduring Cancer Dwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as patients and families negotiate an overextended health system unequipped to respond to the disease. Owing to long wait times, most urban poor cancer patients do not receive a diagnosis until it is too late to treat the disease effectively. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the city's largest cancer care NGO and at India's premier public health hospital, Banerjee describes how, for these patients, a cancer diagnosis is often the latest and most serious in a long series of infrastructural failures. In the wake of these failures, Banerjee tracks how the disease then distributes itself across networks of social relations, testing these networks for strength and vulnerability. Banerjee demonstrates how living with and alongside cancer is to be newly awakened to the fragility of social ties, some already made brittle by past histories, and others that are retested for their capacity to support.

Stories of cancer are full of monster and marvels; the monstrousness of the disease and the treatments, the marvels of the cures and the saved lives. Still one of the most dreaded diseases to haunt our imaginations, cancer is more than an illness - it is a cultural phenomenon. People who have cancer are bombarded with competing explanations of their conditions: it is genetically inherited; it is environmentally produced; it is the result of their personality. Teratologies - A Cultural Study of Cancer investigates how this disease is perceived, experienced and theorised in contemporary society. It explores changing beliefs about the causes of, and the cures for, cancer in both biomedicine and its increasingly popular alternative counterparts. Analysing conventional and alternative medical accounts, self-help manuals and patients' personal stories, Jackie Stacey takes a critical look at the place of heroes, metaphors, the self and the body in these competing bids to produce the authoritative definition of the meaning of cancer today. Interspersed with these detailed textual investigations are discussions of broader issues such as the feminist debates about the history of science, the place of consumer culture in health practices and the status of patients and of health professionals in postmodern society. Combining authobiographical narratives with contemporary theoretical debates, the author carves out a specifically feminist analysis of the cultural dimensions of cancer. She brings accounts of her own illness under the critical lens of academic scrutiny and situates these personal stories within a discussion of contemporary cultural change.

"Cancer can kill: this fact makes it concrete. Still, it's a devious knave. Nearly every American will experience it up-close and all too personally, wondering why the billions of research dollars thrown at the word haven't exterminated it from the English language. Like a sapper diffusing a bomb, Jain unscrambles the emotional, bureaucratic, medical, and scientific tropes that create the thing we call cancer. Scientists debate even the most basic facts about the disease, while endlessly generated, disputed, population data produce the appearance of knowledge. Jain takes the vacuum at the center of cancer seriously and demonstrates the need to understand cancer as a set of relationships--economic, sentimental, medical, personal, ethical, institutional, statistical. Malignant analyzes the peculiar authority of the socio-sexual psychopathologies of body parts; the uneven effects of expertise and power; the potentially cancerous consequences of medical procedures such as IVF; the huge industrial investments that manifest themselves as bone-cold testing rooms; the legal mess of medical malpractice law; and the teeth-grittingly jovial efforts to smear makeup and wigs over the whole messy problem of bodies spiraling into pain and decay. Malignant examines the painful cognitive dissonances produced by the ways a culture that has relished dazzling success in every conceivable arena have twisted one of its staunchest failures into an economic triumph. The intractable foil to American achievement, cancer hands us -- on a silver platter and ready for Jain's incisively original dissection -- our sacrifice to the American Dream"--

Increasingly, pharmaceuticals are available as the solutions to a wide range of human health problems and health risks, minor and major. This book portrays how pharmaceutical use is, at once, a solution to, and a difficulty for, everyday life. Exploring lived experiences of people at different stages of the life course and from different countries around the world, this collection highlights the benefits as well as the challenges of using medicines on an everyday basis. It raises questions about the expectations associated with the use of medications, the uncertainty about a condition or about the duration of a medicine regimen for it, the need to negotiate the stigma associated with a condition or a type of medicine, the need to access and pay for medicines and the need to schedule medicine use appropriately, and the need to manage medicines’ effects and side effects. The chapters include original empirical research, literature review and theoretical analysis, and convey the sociological and phenomenological complexity of ‘living pharmaceutical lives’. This book is of interest to all those studying and researching social pharmacy and the sociology of health and illness.