Lessons Learned : What Cancer and Bone Marrow Transplantation Taught Me (and What You Need to Know to Win Your War Against Cancer)

Lessons Learned does not provide a wishy-washy approach to talking about your feelings or the way you wish things were or could be. It deals accurately and realistically with a disease and medical treatment that are frequently harsh, but usually manageable. Cancer and the bone marrow transplantation (BMT) procedure are each manageable by the cancer survivor having the right attitude, emotional ammunition, and assignment of tasks. The information necessary to plan to successfully battle cancer - to develop a plan that cuts to the chase, deals with reality, and generates positive results - is provided here. Reading this book will provide you access to a healthy helping of what matters most in your battle for life. Right now you could stonewall yourself or your loved ones, and ignore the crises facing you. You could stonewall, and enter your war with cancer unprepared for it. That choice is available to all reading this, but really that is no choice at all. In the end, that dog won’t hunt. Is it worth anything to try to get through what lies ahead by ignoring your grinding fear and uncertainty and dissatisfaction with where you must go and what you must do? Is it worth avoiding a chance to improve your chances for a longer and healthier life, because you are too proud, because you think you already know what to do, or because you hate to admit that we all have a lot of improvements to make? I know where you are now. I have been there myself. Cancer is difficult. Bone marrow transplantation is even more difficult. So what. Life is difficult, too. In the end, it kills you! But you should do everything you can to ensure that it is life, rather than cancer, that ultimately leads to your passing. The information provided in Lessons Learned can help lift you out of the hole you are now in. It is not too late for you to do all that you truly can to help yourself. But it can get that way, quickly, if you fail to take whatever preparative actions you can right now. Don’t throw away an opportunity to help yourself. As is true of most important things in life, in the end, your actions rather than your intentions are what will ultimately determine whom wins. This book offers insights and information intended to help readers more effectively manage the various problems and challenges that arise routinely during BMT. This book describes certain things about cancer and BMT that everyone thinks and few have discussed. It describes other issues that everyone discusses and few have really thought about. This was done because you need understand both your enemy and yourself to gain your best shot at achieving a cure. I hope that you now begin plan your work against cancer, and then work your plan. Sure, that’s a cliche, but statements rarely become cliches without having a basis in fact.