The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I lost both of my parents to cancer, my dad when he was 61 and I was 31, and my mom when she was 60 and I was 38. Since losing my dad I’ve read a lot, including a number of these end of life books. The good ones come from people who either gave thought to how to live life before being diagnosed or read a lot of literature throughout their life. The worst are a hodgepodge of memoir and random “deep” thoughts with no organizing theme.

In this case, Yip-Williams life story is somewhat interesting though spread out throughout the book. I’m especially interested in her solo-legally-blind travels. Otherwise, I would only recommend this to people who want to mine the book for colon cancer specifics, which admittedly might be useful.

Also, the whole thing about her husband's hypothetical second wife was a bit much. Granted I'm not dying of cancer, but I really love my husband, and I imagine (and hope) that if I died he'd marry someone completely awesome. The last thing I'd want to do is leave them with a list of musts and can'ts to make them feel guilty about their decisions when I'm not even around. Wanting your kids to be raised a particular way is completely understandable, I'd want them to be loved by a stepmom more than I'd worry about their music classes. And I'd even want them to be happy enough to be able to call her mom. Real love is about them, not me.

For me, the best part of the book might be her husband's epilogue. It's truthful and full of selfless love. It also provides a pretty good analysis of the reality of a bad cancer diagnosis and a long terrible illness.

If you want end-of-life wisdom I recommend: Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl who survived the Holocaust, The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs who died of cancer, and Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich (about the annoying positivity forced on cancer patients and others). Or you know, actual books about philosophy, religion, and literature generally.

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The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book wrecked me. The author is a wonderful writer, daughter, wife, and mother. She is 37-39 in the course of this memoir. She goes through the loss of her mother to cancer and describes it in great and accurate detail. I lost my dad to cancer when I was 31, and my mother to the same cancer when I was 38, and the details really resonated- particularly with what I went through with my mother.

And she gets sick with terminal cancer at the same time, and ultimately loses the battle. As a mom, I can really feel her sense of devastation over leaving her kids. My heart really aches for her sons, and I hope wherever they go in life people are always extra kind to them. I can also relate to her protectiveness of her husband- forbidding him to get a vasectomy in case he wants more children with his next wife. That's real love.

She says so many beautiful, brilliant, and accurate things in the book. I borrowed the book but I plan to buy a copy so that I can underline basically everything.

“I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.”

“My friends ask a new kind of question: How is today? I hope the pain is manageable today.”

“Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything.”

Amen, Nina. Sounds like you would have been an amazing person to know and with whom to talk.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As other readers have mentioned this book is more like two books. The popular science fiction portion of the book deals with the study of the HeLa cell lines named for the woman whom they were taken from, Henrietta Lacks. The other portion of the book is the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family which really highlights many of the injustices towards black Americans particularly in the realm of science and medicine. Both stories also lead into conversations about the evolving law regarding consent and control over one's genetic information and material.

The first story about the scientific research on HeLa is bazonkers (doesn't matter that bazonkers is not a word, something like that is needed for emphasis). I'm usually pretty up-to-date on what's going on in Science but I definitely missed some of the stranger HeLa cell research.

The second story about the family is touching, upsetting, and angering. Although at times this part feels a bit meandering with an examination of a large family. I was mostly interested in the story of her daughter Deborah probably because she's the person Skloot got to know the best.

The status of our rights regarding our genetic material is both frightening and frustrating.

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Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I appreciated her critique of the positive-thinking culture in culture and business. I find the former irritating and the latter oppressive. The research shows that pessimists make the best attorneys. I've always suspected that would be true in a number of other fields where anticipating and averting disaster would be beneficial to a cheery facade. But the demands on sick people to be positive and even to pray are exhausting. What are we to make of how we've treated both the most positive and religious people who die from cancer- not to mention the grumps and atheists we tortured with this advice right to the grave? I agree with the premise that there is a sinister intersect of religion, magic and the corporate world in all this victim-blaming.

That said, I think Ehrenreich wasn't very fair to the scientific study of happiness and positive psychology. (Says the person who is obsessed with Jonathan Haidt and his books.)

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Breasts by Florence Williams

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book that I recommend to all woman and to all parents. Discusses the purpose and evolution of breasts. She discusses issues important to feminism, breast health, and wider environmental issues. It's heaviest on the latter, but overall a very interesting, educational, and alarming book.

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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book starts out a little unfocused, possibly because the author himself was a little confused about what his future held at the beginning. But as it became more clear that he would soon die, he consolidated his thoughts.

Having lost my dad to cancer, I have the same complaints about cancer treatment that he had. Disjointed care at Valley Hospital- the urologists didn't talk to the oncologists and so on; his oncologist went on maternity leave and no one properly took her place so my dad would die while she was on maternity leave with no real oncologist to help with decisions; inadequate late-night staff; and the sudden cessations of treatment when it became unclear if the cancer or the treatment was doing more damage. These issues, best explained by someone who is himself a doctor, are issues that demand correction.

The second most important thing this book deals with is the issue of whether to live like you will never die or like you might die imminently. Despite the difficulty, I'm a firm believer in doing your best to live in the latter way. As horrific as cancer is, it does allow time to sort out final business and time to say goodbye. Many deaths are sudden- physically painless- but if your matters aren't settled because you've lived like this was always a possibility, then your matters will never be settled. Your life might be not have been lived to the best of your ability.

Finally, Kalanithi's wife has important things to say about mourning a loved one. She expresses surprise that the love remains. Death does not take the actual love with the loved one. Much as they might leave you a piano, the love remains with the living. This has been my experience as well.

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The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is amazing. It's informative: even with all I know about cancer (unfortunately) I still learned so much. It's interesting: I was eager to go back to this long book and learn more about the disease and the people who changed the landscape of the battle against cancer. I was afraid to read it because I thought I would find it horribly depressing (especially after reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande) but it wasn't. It was hopeful in a practical realistic way, explaining what is being done currently all that remains to be done.

My only critique is that the book rambled on at the end quite a bit. It should have had a shorter tighter ending. The ending seems to have dragged on from Chapters 46-49, and an epilogue.

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Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very necessary, very true, very depressing book.

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The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently reread this because I've been reading memoirs written by people facing death (The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, When Breath Becomes Air, The Year of Magical Thinking, It's Okay to Laugh). I didn't remember it as well as I remembered the video of his lecture. This is more of an inspirational positive-thinking-working-harder-than-everyone business book and a book for his children.

There is some, but not a lot, of discussion about what one should do with one's life. He thinks you should be passionate about your work and work hard, but this didn't really resonate with me especially considering his job was teaching and creating virtual reality technologies. That's cool, but is he really glad he spent all that extra time at work even though his life was shorter than average? Maybe some people love their work that much, but I would hope it would be mostly people in helping professions. Perhaps he thought his job was helping people? Or maybe he thought it was the most fun pastime ever?

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