Its Not All Peaches And Roses

Life as an unhealthy person is not all peaches and roses.... Wednesday I wrote about Claire the amazing woman with CF who is full of energy and fun and talks about things we don't want to talk about - like dying. Anyway, she says she wants to wrote a book but not one about a 'happy sick person'. There are a lot of books out there about 'happy sick' people but reading them doesn't necessarily make you feel happy for them.

Honestly who can put a perky spin on being sick? One of the many downsides of life with chronic illnesses is that a little thing becomes a big thing. You have no idea.

Anyway, the world is papered with books about being cheerful, finding yourself, eating better, or walking/riding/hiking thousands of miles or something unimaginable to me.

After my first cancer diagnosis, I picked up your basic paperback fiction romance novel and found out it was about a woman who had some sort of heart defect and how she lived with it. I was not ready to read it and threw it across the room. Eventually a few years later I finished it and like it.

Later, after breast cancer I was older and more adventuresome in my reading. I read and liked 'Crazy Sexy Cancer' by Kris Carr. (I highly recommend that book and website and movie - hint, it's all about attitude). What I did like was the fact that her life was not all peaches and roses when she was diagnosed. She showed us how to cope and accept and develop the cancer attitude for making life good again - I mean what more can you ask for?

I have a bunch of other books that were noteworthy about life with cancer/other terminal/chronic ailment. If you search on the tag 'Books' on my blog, you might find them. I did read a graphic (cartoon) book that was about a woman with breast cancer (and I can't remember that title and I didn't put it in my blog). It ends when she goes to her last PET scan.... You get the idea.... I was very upset after reading that one.

I think somewhere out there is a happy medium of what life is like in the unhealthiness world in which some of us reside. I think Kris Carr is one who comes very close. But there are so many who miss the mark. Getting breast cancer and writing a book how our heroine starts wearing all pink, goes on long walks and ends up doing every Komen walk around the country, and finds God along the way, does nothing to help me feel better.

[I do not mean to offend anyone and their religion. Everyone believes differently. God did not give you your ailment. God is not going to cure your ailment. Talking or praying to God may help you feel better. However, he does not have the magic wand all of us sick people wish for.]

Anyway, we all do what we can to feel better after we find out we are not that healthy. Books about the not so rosy side of life post diagnosis can be very helpful. But the badly written ones, not so much