THE ROAD BACK TO HEALTH

by Neil A. Fiore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1984

Personal, encouraging advice to those with cancer on channeling emotions to battle the disease and its treatment's side effects. Fiore has generalized this approach from his own experiences in overcoming testicular cancer, discovered at age 32, and his work as a psychologist with other cancer patients. He begins with a report of his own illness, and then progresses step-by-step through the stages that anyone might also face. ""Coping With Diagnosis"" requires that patients explore their own beliefs about the disease: has it always been fatal in friends and relatives, so that the outlook now seems hopeless? The first step is to discover that treatment can be successful, and to change one's basic expectations. Bolstering his case with current figures on medical treatment, and with an assortment of case studies, Fiore goes on to explain how anger may be constructively directed (in early stages, it seems to be critical to survival), how difficult issues can be decided most objectively, what to do when depression and helplessness set in, how to manage the stress of having cancer, and how to help ease a terminal diagnosis. (Familiar stress management and relaxation techniques appear throughout.) As Norman Cousins points out in his Foreword, ""Nothing about cancer is more lethal than the hopelessness it produces, and nothing is more essential that the determination to get the best out of whatever is possible."" Sympathetic, practical, and broadly applicable--as against the specifically therapeutic approach propounded in Stephanie Simonton's The Healing Family.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION