Terry Gross recently interviewed writers and cancer survivors Iva Skoch and Kairol Rosenthal on Fresh Air.  Both authors discuss the health insurance issues they dealt with when they were diagnosed. Kairol Rosenthal uses a succinct and thoughtful anaology - recalling the myth about a child trapped under a car and the mother somehow gathering enough strength and focus to pull the car off the injured child - and how upon her diagnosis in her twenties, she felt like both the child and the mother.  Spoken like someone that has navagated the messy labryinth of treatment, paperwork, and phone calls that is known as Young Adult Cancer. 

The first chapter of Kairol Rosenthal’s book Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s contains great health insurance and financial guidance information for cancer patients.  You can download it for free on her website http://everythingchangesbook.com/

Listen to the Fresh Air interview here (running time 38mins 35sec).

Or view the transcript here.

Read Skoch’s Newsweek.com article “Young Patients Laugh at Cancer”

I just read one of the best things I have ever read about cancer, and although we have a review in our book review section about it, I wanted to mention it here. Besides being a great read (I read it in two sittings and could not put it down), Kairol Rosenthal’s Everything Changes is entertaining, full of great resources, and thoroughly profound. 

Parts of this book made me vividly recall my own experiences. I had the “oh really? you too?” reaction that I crave and that is so rarely satisfied. Her take on things, her attitude, and her honestly are all perfectly in line with Waiting Room’s mission. Surprisingly, I was also reminded of personal details relating to the experiences of my friends Tracy and Cindy, of whose late stage cancer I was a part. I know that they both would have related to this book and loved it.

Everything Changes is both a personal history and a record of interviews. The people she speaks to become part of her experience, and the way that the interviews are shared adds depth and weight to her story. They are also records of other people’s experiences that, if isolated, are meaningful and important on their own.

Buy it. Its worth it.

Her blog is also great

 http://everythingchangesbook.com/

So WAITING ROOM MAGAZINE is all about the global grassroots cancer community, but just to clarify, I write from Philadelphia. That being the case, at time this blog might seems little heavy on the Philly cancer scene updates and reports. Not that that is out of the way… There is a new book out by Philadelphia Flyers legend Keith Jones. Keith has hung up his skates for the broadcasting booth and I get the pleasure of listening to his idiocy a few times a week on 610WIP. For someone (Keith) who has never read a book, he has certainly done some good with his autobiography since all proceeds go to benefit Alex’s Lemonade.This is a fine gesture by a pretty lovable guy, but for some reason, in the back of my mind, I have a hard time not thinking about Jonesy and the WIP morning crew cracking ‘lemonade’ jokes sitting around a campfire at Jonesy’s Hoof Hearted Farm.