Informed Decisions: The Complete Book of Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment, and Recovery

I received this book as a gift when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. However, I found the book to be even more valuable after I was finished with my treatments. Once you've had cancer, I think it's normal to worry about the cancer coming back, especially during the first couple of years. To help deal with the fear of recurrence, I used ACS's Informed Decisions to learn about signs and symptoms of other types of cancer. The book is very informative and helped me deal with common aftereffects of cancer.

On the symptom of obstructive jaundice and despite a lack of firm clinical/lab finding of malignant cells from blood tests, ultrasound, ERCP (and cytology) as well as CT Scan, surgeons are of the view that my mother is being attacked by cancer at her bile-duct/head of pancreas. Laparotomy surgery, frozen section, Whipple Procedure and By-pass surgery are suggested for the cure. I knew nothing about cancer and its associated terminologies 6 weeks ago, but thanks to reading this book I begin to have a basic understanding on which I can ask useful questions of doctors/nurses for family decisions.

My son was recently diagnosed with desmoplastic small round-cell tumors and I wanted to learn everything I could about cancer. I looked at many of the hundreds of books available. Informed Decisions was far and away the best book. It provided complete information from diagnosis, to understanding what cancer is, to the various treatment options and their risks versus benefits, to building a support network. This book gave me everything I needed in one place to answer my many questions. Half the battle with cancer is understanding what is going on and what is going to happen. Being educated about cancer makes it easier to deal with the many health professionals involved in the treatment process. If you're going to buy one book about cancer, Informed Decisions is the one! I give it a 10