FROM THIS DAY FORWARD

by Nancy Rossi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1983

The dreadful cancer-death of a young, handsome, opera-loving New York lawyer--as recalled by his wife, the mother of a young son born after her husband's death. Nancy and John met at a party in 1972. After a ""grueling courtship"" that included fights, fun, and dress-up nights at the opera (""And in the dark I could see his lips move to say I love you""), they tied the knot--a terrific marriage shadowed only by Nancy's troubles with having a baby: an ectopic pregnancy with hemorrhaging and a hospital crisis; apparent infertility. Then, in the summer of '78, Nancy was pregnant again, John was up for a partnership, everything was great. But in August John's stomach started to become bloated, his back hurt, and tests eventually revealed mesothelioma, an inoperable malignancy in the lining of the abdomen (caused, apparently, by exposure to asbestos during a summer job back in 1967). The prognosis was dire: ""Our goal,"" said the doctors, ""is to keep him alive to see the baby""--due in only three months. But there was always faint hope, with new treatments working temporarily, and even a few days out of the hospital: ""The IVs, the parancentesis of quarts and quarts of fluid from the tumor, the various chemotherapies, the loss of hair, the physical wasting--it was all normal life to us, because we had no choice. . . ."" And John, who never spoke of death, remained alert and relatively cheerful up to the end--which came about a month before the birth of son John. (""What a precious gift my darling Bunky has left me."") Rossi's breezy, rather Erich-Segal-ish narration of the pre-cancer years--complete with some precious/mawkish dialogue--may put off some readers. And her account of the recovery years since John's death--her need to get away to Wyoming, her first sex in two years (with a married friend), the lawsuit against the asbestos-manufacturer--is curiously unaffecting. But the medical/deathbed nightmare itself is frightening, horrific, with family tensions and the ghastly ironies in Nancy's pregnancy: uneven, often harrowing reading for the ordeal audience.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION