CANCER CURATED: My Public Face-Off with Multiple Myeloma
by Tracy Cooper-Posey
A Cancer Memoir
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Cancer Curated
My Public Face-Off with Multiple Myeloma
Cancer is also a mental game…
Because I am an author, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2022, I unintentionally lived through my treatment, the ups and (some of) the downs, in a very public way. Then something strange happened.
I begun to get messages and emails from strangers. Lots of strangers. My posts and public updates, they said, were helping them deal with their own brush with cancer—as survivors, patients, carers, friends and family and, sometimes, as victims.
The public updates were necessarily short and severely edited. This book is an unedited chronology of everything I dealt with to arrive where I am today. Woven through the public posts are the raw facts and events I didn’t include in the updates. I’ve also included my hugely subjective opinions on some of the extremes cancer patients and their carers go through and how it changes you.
Looking for a different way to think about cancer? Try mine.
A Cancer Memoir
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Praise for Tracy’s fiction and non-fiction:
Cooper-Posey’s writing is always brilliant.
Creative and Amazing!
I really love how original Tracy manages to be.
You’re an inspiration, so keep doing what you’re doing!
WOW, even in this stressful time you’re still on top of it.
Man you are so full of all kinds of information. As always, I found this very interesting and enlightening.
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As Tracy said in the book, there are a lot of cancer memoirs out there but hers isn't just about her cancer: it is a beautifully written, thought provoking, articulate insight on cancer, her experience of it and her intelligent perspective.
What I really loved about this book was her thoughts on how our attitude to Cancer shapes our experience; the question of treatment and our choices weighted by the statistics; and especially the chapter near the end of the book that gave me a whole new outlook on "the elephant in the room".
Having been a fan of Tracy's novels for many years I was one of those fans worrying about her and cherishing those precious public updates that she and Mark very kindly shared. There were times in this book that I got choked up to read how much she suffered before even getting a diagnosis and then the brutal process her body had to go through for treatment. Reading Tracy's full account and not just the public updates (and some precious emails too) made me realise how much she had to go through. Even though I had a very different cancer journey, the book attracted my empathy for Tracy without seeking pity.
I am in awe of the courage and perseverance of this woman!
I had my own brush with Cancer, just after Tracy. My journey was quite different to Tracy with no symptoms or pain before diagnosis then an operation and radiation to successfully treat the breast, all within a six month period. Despite my very different experience I was still very interested in the details of her journey and I'm even more grateful for my lot as it helps me to keep things in perspective.
That's not to say that any part of Tracy's harrowing journey was shared to garner sympathy or to complain about what she went through. Quite the opposite is true, her book comes to us as a stoic and thoughtful assessment of a tough journey and the ongoing battle back to a healthy state of everyday life.
Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in being supportive, educated or who themselves has been diagnosed with any type of cancer.
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Excerpt
EXCERPT FROM Cancer Curated: My Public Face-Off with Multiple Myeloma
COPYRIGHT © TRACY COOPER-POSEY 2023
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Faint Stirring of a Breeze…
May 22, 2021: The pain in my side — told Mark about it. But as stretching or sitting very upright makes it go away, it can’t be my heart.
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This single line journal entry is where it all started, although it would be well over a year before I would recognize that ominous clouds had been gathering just beyond the borders of my senses.
Like the first stirring of a breeze late in the afternoon of a sweltering summer day, heralding the coming thunderstorm, that little niggle in my side was a sign…one I completely missed.
I am, as the French say, of a certain age. And I’m a writer, who sits at a desk all day long, and would rather read than exercise. Oh hell, I’d rather do anything but exercise.
Plus, I had spent the last eight years scrambling to write lots of books so that I could pay the bills. Actually, I was more driven than that; I wanted to avoid, above all else, the humiliation of having to find a day job. I have been writing full time since December 2015, and couldn’t stand the thought of having to go back to working for someone else.
So I worked very long hours, and didn’t spare a lot of time for my health…or anything else.
When I got the aching, stabbing pain in my left side, just below my breast, I naturally assumed it was my heart. That finally, ignoring my health was catching up with me. I was horribly overweight, my age was not going backward the way I would prefer, and everyone was talking about how sitting all day was the new smoking.
Only, when I straightened up properly, the pain went away. I didn’t think a heart problem could simply vanish by stretching. It didn’t make sense. As the pain wasn’t disabling in any way, I told myself it would either resolve itself, or I’d figure out what was going on in a few days’ time.