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My Year of Cancer During Covid
by Helen Epstein
More than 600,000 American women today have had endometrial cancer, the most common cancer of the female reproductive organs. More women are diagnosed every year.
Getting Through It is a veteran journalist's guide to the medical steeplechase of surgery, chemo and radiation therapy. It is based on her notebooks and conversations with friends and former classmates who successfully completed treatment. Their candid commentary contextualizes Epstein's narrative. Like her ground-breaking Children of the Holocaust, the first book about the transmission of intergenerational trauma, this book braids eyewitness reporting, interviews, statistical research and elements of memoir into a seamless whole.
Getting Through It is not only for people who have shared Epstein's voyage through serious illness and wish to make sense of it, but for people who fear it may be in their future, for their doctors, therapists and nurses, family members and friends who want to better understand what contemporary cancer treatment looks like from the patient's point of view.
Epstein is alert to the changing nature of the contemporary medical world (almost all her doctors are women; her diagnosis was made by a Nigerian-American GYN) and to the differing experiences of single patients, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples. Although she references statistics, her focus is on stories. During her treatment, two friends – both physicians – were diagnosed with endometrial cancer and theirs are part of the book.
As a reporter, Epstein found it natural to document her experience of cancer as it happened, taking photos, interviewing friends, classmates, doctors, nurses, technicians and other patients.
In July of 2021, after a year of treatment, she was declared cancer-free.
Media reviews not yet available.
This information about Getting Through It was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Helen Epstein is best known for her non-fiction trilogy Children of the Holocaust; Where She Came From; and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma. All three reviewed here:
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/265180/sexual-abuse-holocaust-survivor-epstein
In 2022 book, she published Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer during Covid.
Born in Prague, Helen grew up in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College High School, Hebrew University, and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, then began freelancing for diverse publications including the Sunday New York Times. Her profiles of legendary musicians are collected in the book Music Talks.
She began teaching journalism at New York University in 1974 and became the first woman in the department to be awarded tenure. In 1986, she left NYU to move to Massachusetts. She now lectures at universities; health organizations; high schools; synagogues, libraries and churches, and writes for the New England cultural website The Arts Fuse. Contact her through her website: helenepstein.com.
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