I was given a copy of Dr. Love's book after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it became invaluable to me. Frequently I had to set it aside for a short time because the information was so frightening, but cancer and its' treatment is a frightening experience.

The information she provided allowed me to ask important questions and make good decisions about the choices available to me. I had good doctors, but they did not go into some of the details I needed to know such as: odds of recurrence with lumpectomy vs. mastectomy; which chemotherapy drugs produced what side effects; why radiation?

She also provided information that allowed me to better understand the idiosyncrasies of breast cancer and my particular prognosis.

Breast cancer research is producing such promise with new drugs and procedures, that there is no way a book can be published with "the latest" information. Still, I HIGHLY recommend Dr. Love's book to ALL women--whether they are interested in breast feeding or are facing difficult decisions about breast cancer treatment options.


valuable for consumers   December 7, 2000
 42 out of 54 found this review helpful

This book offers very helpful information on breast cancer. It affected my outlook on treatment, particularly chemotherapy.

I am not a doctor or a breast cancer patient, but I think I know something about decision-making under risk. If you are the type of person who likes to make their own medical decisions, based on information and advice from doctors, this is a good book for you. Also, if you like to think about quantitative, statistical factors in making a decision, this is a good book for you.

Let me illustrate the point about chemotherapy with a metaphor. Imagine two people in a car--a driver and a 14-year-old. The driver notices a bee inside the car, on the windshield. The 14-year old takes a pistol out of the glove compartment and offers to shoot the bee. The driver says, "Go ahead."

What's wrong with this picture? My guess is that the driver has an irrational fear of bees, based on poor knowledge. The 14-year old has an overblown sense of the value of guns.

Oncologists with chemotherapy are like the 14-year-old who wants to shoot the bee. And many women with breast cancer are like the driver who is so scared of the bee that the potential long-term side effects of the gun don't affect the decision.

There definitely are cases in which I would favor shooting the bee (applying chemo). But I would recommend making your own decision, based on the data in this book, rather than passively accepting the "standard" (which keeps changing to lower the threshold of risk required to supposedly warrant chemo).

There is much more information in this book than the data on chemotherapy. But that information alone makes it highly valuable.


Some major flaws   October 8, 2005
 42 out of 46 found this review helpful

This is probably the most comprehensive source of information on breast cancer and other breast issues that most of us will ever find, and it manages to avoid the cloying "good girl" kitch of those horrid pink websites. For those reasons, it is the best place to start educating yourself. Buy it.

BUT, be aware that it has a few major faults. Dr. Love spends a great deal of time pointing out the side effects of the three major treatments: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Many of these side effects are not temporary or fixable, but are permanent and life threatening in themselves. This is especially valuable knowledge since most doctors and those pink websites downplay or totally ignore disabling and potentially fatal problems such as lymphedema, secondary cancers and heart failure which can result from these standard treatments. I strongly suspect that all the attention paid to hair loss (which will grown back in, for crying out loud) is there to distract potential patients from the real problems.

Dr. Love also lays bare the dismal statistics on the efficacy of chemotherapy given to non-metastatic women (2-9% of women are actually helped - an eye opening figure to most of us who probably thought chemo "saved" 50 or 60 women per hundred). These are not statistics that the pink groups or your oncologist are eager to have you know.

However, after spending pages and pages warning us that chemo is dangerous and not especially effective, she then just says "Oh, but go ahead and have it." Why? After imparting so much frightening information, I'm not following her thought process as to why chemo is a good deal for non-metastatic women, and I think she owes her readers a fuller explanation of why she, and the rest of the American medical community, have come to this conclusion.

In addition, although she loves statistics (and so do I), she too often lapses into anecdotes that are frightening or bizarre or in other ways not very helpful. She also, at very critical times, as in discussing heart damage from radiation and chemotherapy, abandons statistics altogether and just says "seldom" or "infrequently". Well, what does that mean? 2-9% of women helped qualifies as "seldom" in my mind, yet to Dr. Love those are great statistics to gamble on and accept chemo.

Lastly, remember that Dr. Love is still a doctor, she is not your best gal pal, and as such, has a very different way of assessing the treatment plans. One of the most chilling anecdotes in the book is when she refers to a (non-metastatic) patient of hers who underwent chemo (2-9% efficacy rate) and ended up needing a heart transplant thanks to Adriamycin. Dr. Love just shrugs it off with, well at least she was alive to need the heart transplant, with no concern for the quality of life this woman was left with.

In sum, there is much good information here, but you will need to search for some specific answers elsewhere. And the knowledge she does give you may make it harder, not easier, to make decisions. But knowledge is always harder than trusting ignorance.


Not the best! Try Your Breast Cancer Journey instead.   November 15, 2001
 35 out of 36 found this review helpful

This book is promoted as the best book to use for breast cancer. It is not. Skip the book, and visit the website to see photographs of women who have gone through the surgeries. The first half of the book is about basic breast anatomy and development, and not about the choices needed now. The second half of the book suffers from three problems: old statistics that do not take into account changes in treatment, too much detail on rare complications and types of disease, and too much detail about recurrence. Not recommended.

The most serious flaw is that it uses outdated survival and mortality statistics that do not take into account the current treatment protocols. The result is unnecessary fear and panic. There are no good statistics on ten-year survival rates, because the current treatment protocols have not been in use for ten years. The development of changes in chemotherapy, antibodies, and hormonal therapy is changing so rapidly that for at least the next twenty years there will be no good ten-year survival rate statistics. Even the five-year statistics do not give the current picture. Dr. Love only gives one paragraph's worth of guidance on how to interpret the statistics. This can result in resignation and fear, just when one should be preparing to live well and fight hard.

The second flaw is that Dr. Love's frustrations with the imperfections of medicine and the slowness of change of the medical system come through. She spends lots of detail on rare complications of surgery, and rare possibilities of recurrence. She agonizes over the fact that any lives are lost. I want that knowledge and compassion in your team. I do not want to sift through this detail when I need to get information on which to base decisions.

The final difficulty is not a flaw, but a portion of the book. As a newly diagnosed survivor, I wanted to know what I should do next, what will happen next, and how I can detect any recurrences. Ido not need an entire section for women who have recurrences. Fewer than half of women who have breast cancer get recurrences, and right now, I need to concentrate on what I can do to prevent one, not how soon to arrange for hospice in case of recurrence.

Instead, try John Link's Survival Manual, or, best of all, Your Breast Cancer Journey from the American Cancer Society


Indispensable in a time of great need   May 3, 2004
 33 out of 39 found this review helpful

I bought this book because it seemed like a sensible thing to have. A day after it arrived from Amazon, a friend of mine had a lump detected on a mammogram. Four weeks later, she had a mastectomy. Actually I never read the book. I gave it to her before I had a chance. She thanks me for it every time she sees me. She said she had gathered a lot of info, but this book was the most informative and systematic of anything she'd read. She brought it with her to every appointment with her doctors. "I don't know how I could have dealt with this without it." So I'm now about to order a second copy as it's been only eight weeks since the first one arrived. I hope this copy sees much less use.