Product Info"Anyone one who who's coping with cancer needs accurate, sympathetic and reliable information on all the issues- practical, medical and emotional - in order to get access to the best support and treatment available. For men it can be difficult to find this information, or to ask for the help you need.

This book is about living and coping with cancer: how it affects your daily life, your relationships - every aspect of your life, in fact - and how you deal with those issues. There are no rules for coping, but there are ways to make it easier, practically and emotionally.

It provides clear, non-technical information about the cancers men get, what cancer is and the kind of treatments you're likely to be offered. But as well as medical explanations there is advice about dealing with your medical team, getting through the early stages after diagnosis, the effects of living with cancer on your daily life and on those close to you, plus financial and other practical matters. In addition, special issues for men, from fertility to coping at work, are addressed in a down-to-earth, realistic way."

Contents

Contents

Introduction

• Male health
• Cancer
• Cancer treatments
• Dealing with your medical team
• Coping in the early stages
• Personal relationships
• Coping with daily life
• Financial issues
• The aftermath - and the future

Glossary of medical terms
Useful contacts
Index

Extra Info

Introduction

Our motivation for writing this book was Neil's diagnosis of testicular cancer in June 1996. We were offered scant verbal information or help in finding either medical or general literature about his cancer, treatment or coping and living with the disease. After the shock of diagnosis, we began almost immediately to search out information for ourselves. We found leaflets and pamphlets and one or two autobiographical works, but it became clear to us that while much has been written about cancer from a female perspective, there were no books which dealt specifically with men and cancer. In one medical bookshop we were cheerfully informed, 'No, you won't find anything like that because it's not women's issues, is it?' So we decided to do it ourselves.

This book is about coping and living with cancer: how it affects your daily life, your relationships — every aspect of your life, in fact— and how you can confront these issues. There are no rules for coping with cancer. What we have done is to look at some of the ways in which coping can be made easier, both practically and emotionally. We did not set out to provide detailed information about particular cancers or treatments because good, basic factual literature does exist. We have included some description of the cancers which commonly affect men and their treatments but we wanted to put this in a broader context.

The early chapters provide descriptions of how cancer develops, of the cancers which commonly affect men and of the conventional forms of treatment. The remainder of the book looks at coping as effectively as possible with cancer from a number of different angles: dealing with your medical team; getting through the early stages after diagnosis; the effects of living with cancer on your personal relationships and daily life; financial and other practical issues.

As non-medics, we are indebted to Dr T. S. Ganesan of the ICRF Medical Oncology Unit at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford and Dr J. Chester of St James' Hospital in Leeds for checking the factual accuracy of the medical information in the book.

We hope that if you or someone close to you has recently been diagnosed with cancer, you will find a useful factual background in the first three chapters and equally important information about ways of coping in the rest of the book. If you already have some experience of living with cancer, the 'coping' sections of the book may feel more familiar, but we hope that you will find fresh ideas to renew your strength and resolve.

Neil fought his cancer with great energy and determination because he was that kind of man. It is not the only way, and it is important for all men to find ways which suit them best. Neil's treatment was at first apparently very successful, but he suffered a relapse in early 1997 and after a long year of continuing treatment, he died in December 1997. He felt he was hugely unlucky: relatively old for this type of cancer (he was 35 when diagnosed with a testicular teratoma) and desperately unfortunate to be in the small proportion of men for whom treatment is not effective. This was his way of rationalizing his disease. You may feel differently about your own cancer.

This book was almost complete when Neil died, and stands as a testament to his deep conviction that the most appalling situations can be made easier to live with if we are willing to confront them, talk about them and take what control we can over them. He also hoped that others would benefit both from our personal experience and from our contact with other men living with cancer.

While this book was born out of a tremendous personal motivation, we received invaluable and enthusiastic support from a variety of sources. There are many individuals — family, friends, patients and medical staff alike — who contributed to our views on coping with cancer by sharing with us their own perceptions and experiences. We would particularly like to thank Dr T. S. Ganesan for his support, for writing the foreword, for checking the book from a medical standpoint and for his suggestions and comments from a doctor's point of view. Thanks are also due to Dr John Chester for checking the text for medical accuracy at an early stage and for his feedback. We are especially grateful to Judith Beare who read and commented on the book and offered suggestions based on her close involvement in our experience. Finally, we owe much to Neil's parents, Jan and Derek Priddy, for all their love, support and encouragement.

Helen Beare

About the Authors
Helen Beare was born in 1963 in Plymouth. After a degree in French and German at Cambridge University, she worked for a firm of chartered accountants in London, later specializing in working with smaller businesses and in business planning. From 1991 she worked with her partner, Neil Priddy, in a chartered accountancy practice established by him in 1989, until 1996 when Neil's cancer was diagnosed. She has written two other books for Sheldon Press, How to Avoid Business Failure (1993) and Your Own Business: From Concept to Success (1995).

Neil Priddy was born in Essex in 1960. He lived in both the UK and Brussels before taking a degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University. In 1985 he qualified as a chartered accountant and worked for both small and large firms of accountants in London before establishing his own practice near Buckingham in 1989. The business was sold in 1996 when Neil was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After an eighteen month battle against his disease, Neil died in December 1997, shortly before the completion of this book.