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Title

Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting

Meredith Norton

Review

After reading the book Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein, I was intrigued about what else might be out there of the same sort. Basically, I was interested in the real story behind living with chronic illness. I found Lopsided. I was not disappointed. Ms. Norton was living in France with her husband and toddler, trying to improve her less than stellar command of the French language, when she discovered what she thought was an infection. Several doctors sent her home with different remedies and admonitions not to worry about it. But during a visit to her family in California, a quick visit to an American doctor yielded a much different diagnosis: Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

Rather than let the low survival rate stop her, she decided to be one of the other percentage - the ones who don't die from this disease. Similar to Sick Girl, I discovered that breast cancer, or at least this form of it, doesn't involve finding a lump, having a breast removed, getting chemotherapy through an IV, losing your hair, and getting all better in the end. It's just not that simple, and on second thought, I realized it's probably never that simple for any cancer patient, even when it goes exactly like that. In Ms. Norton's case, there was no lump - just something resembling an infection. She sassed her way past family members, various doctors, friends, and strangers, and managed to get through more courses of treatment than she was originally led to expect. She managed it all not completely without her moments of self-pity (who wouldn't), but all with humor, grace, dignity, self-deprecation, stumbles, and a mixed bag of life's trials. Lance Armstrong, she is not. Meredith Norton, she is. A "must read," this is. (Yoda, I am not.) ~ Jana Atkins

Review Date

Reviewed October 2010