A Thank You Note

It has been fifteen months since the publication of my book, Back To Life: A Bladder Cancer Journey.

So, I feel some thanks are in order.

First, I want to thank each and every one of my readers. The sales have so far exceeded my expectations that I am truly stunned and humbled.

Next I want to thank all of the bladder cancer patients, caregivers, and physicians who have reached out and contacted me through the email in the acknowledgments section of the book and through the book's Web site, www.bladdercancerjourney.com.  I have spoken on the phone with dozens of folks who are having to make some of the same decisions I detailed in my story, and actually met one reader in person for lunch when we both found ourselves in Las Vegas at the same time.

Special thanks to the 43 (and counting) readers who have put fingers to keyboard and published a review of Back To Life on Amazon.  Amazingly, 41 of the 43 reviews awarded it five stars!  Read the reviews here.

Thanks to the gallery owners, banks, and coffee shops that have hosted my book signings and readings here in Portland. I have met so many interesting people, and what fun they have been!

As always, I have to thank Dr. Sia Daneshmand, who not only saved my life, but also agreed to contribute the incredibly powerful Foreword to my book.

Mary Elizabeth Williams, who just released her own cancer story, A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles, was kind enough to write the back cover blurb, which is reproduced at the end of this post. She's a senior writer for Salon.com, and a storyteller extraordinaire. Thanks, MBW!

Lastly, I wrote this book not as a bladder cancer book, or even as a medical memoir, but as an adventure story. My thanks go out to everyone I wrote about in Back To Life, who make up this true story.

If you have read the book, please take a minute of two to submit a short review on Amazon.  A continuous flow of new reviews is the single best way to insure that one's book will appear high in the search rankings on the site.

And of course, if you haven't read it, now would be an excellent time to pick up a copy, either in paperback or Kindle e-book format.

Many thanks to you all!

The Author and Dr. Sia Daneshmand

"As a Stage 4 melanoma survivor, I found myself deeply moved by - and profoundly grateful for - Frank Sadowski's honest and enlightening account of what it's really like inside the cancer experience. But more than that, simply as a reader, I was enthralled with his effortless gift for compelling storytelling. Back to Life is full of humor, suspense, and grit, a medical drama that brims with heart and soul." 

-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, senior staff writer at Salon.com and author of Gimme Shelter and A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer. 

Book Review - A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles

Author and Salon.com senior staff writer Mary Elizabeth Williams has just released a most amazing book. It tells the story of her diagnosis and treatment of stage four malignant melanoma over the course of several years. Cancer memoirs today are – unfortunately – a dime a dozen, but this book is about as far from the “I-fought-my-courageous-battle-with-cancer-and-heroically-beat-it” formula as you can get. Instead, we readers get a superbly written and very human view of what maintaining a life and a family in the face of probable death looks like.  It contains a wealth of medical information around the emerging use of immunotherapy as the first truly new treatment for cancer in a hundred years, presented in easy to understand plain English.

Her story takes us through the traumas of surgery, recovery, and recurrence, and relates the loss of friends and the difficulty of holding a family together, but it is the author’s deft and frequent use of humor that got this reader through this troubling tale.  Her humor is as natural and insightful as it is pervasive throughout. The story of her relationship with her best friend Debbie is as emotionally touching as anything I’ve ever read.

It should be noted that this book is for everyone, whether or not cancer has yet touched your life.

As a person who has – so far – survived a cancer diagnosis whose preliminary prediction was for a 5% chance of three-year survival, I feel a unique bond as she shares the cringe worthy details of the cancer experience from both a physical as well as emotional point of view.  As I read through this book, the word that kept popping up in my head was “honest.” We are presented with a brand of honesty that is so direct, unassuming, and shameless as to be almost painful.

Those of you who are already familiar with Ms. Williams writing will know that she is particularly adept at writing pithy endings to her articles, and without spoiling, let me just say she knocks this ending out of the park.

Finally, I have two pieces of advice: buy this wonderful book, and go with the jumbo box of tissues.

About the author:  

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a senior staff writer for award-winning Salon.com and has appeared in the New York Times and numerous other national and regional publications. The author of Gimme Shelter and A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles, she lives in New York City with her family.

[Full disclosure: I have been virtual friends with the author for several years, and she has been uniquely supportive of my own modest efforts at writing. She was also kind enough to pen the blurb on the back cover of my own cancer memoir. - Frank]

An Educational and Inspiring Video

This short video says a great deal about people's ignorance when it comes to talking to cancer patients, and sums up what me and many other cancer veterans have been saying for years. A beautiful statement.

An Excerpt from "Back To Life: A Bladder Cancer Journey" by Frank Sadowski

Here is a short excerpt from my new book. It is now available at Amazon.com in both Kindle e-book and paperback formats. Go to Back To Life to view and purchase!

Part way through chapter eight......

      Recovering a bit, I then asked him about the surgery. I said I assumed that I would have a hole in my side and an external bag for urine. He said that was certainly an option and a possibility, but that there were other options, such as a neobladder. I had never heard of this, and he began to explain it to me in some fairly technical medical terms. It was at this moment that a nurse came in and told him he was needed in another exam room for a few moments. He excused himself, and I sat by myself in shock and terror. Even though I had known he was from the surgery side, I didn’t think this was how this day was going to go. Dr. Reid knocked and entered. He told me he understood that Dr. Daneshmand was beginning to explain the neobladder option. I said that was true but I really didn’t understand it yet. He sat across from me on the stool where Dr. Daneshmand had been sitting and put his chin in his hands, elbows on his knees.

      “Here’s what we do,” he said. “We cut you from stem to stern, and take out your bladder, prostate, seminal vesicles, and thirty to fifty abdominal lymph nodes. Then we cut out a one-meter section of your small intestine, the ileum, still alive and hooked up to the blood supply. Then we use the intestine to build a new bladder in the cavity where your original bladder came out. We hook one end up to your kidneys, the other end to your exit pipe, and you’re good to go.”

      I was completely floored that an actual doctor had put it in such terms. Dr. Reid looked at me and winked.

      “Actually, Frank, it’s just a little more complicated than that.”

Chapter Nine

      When Dr. Daneshmand returned a few minutes later, he resumed his explanation of the surgery he was proposing. It was pretty much exactly as Dr. Reid had paraphrased it; a new bladder would be constructed from my own body tissue. I told him that I would need to talk to my wife and think about it for twenty-four hours or so. He said of course, and the day was over. It was after six o’clock. I had been there for almost seven hours. I was yawning as I retrieved my car from the underground garage and drove to my hotel. When I got there I called home and gave Laura the long version of the day. She was encouraged that I thought so highly of Dr. Daneshmand and his team, but expressed her concern that he was asking me to jump into exactly what I had been so emphatically warned against: a quick decision to undergo radical surgery.

      We had lived in Portland from 1999–2001 before moving to the Seattle area, and I had lived in a company apartment downtown for five months before the family moved out there, so I knew downtown Portland very well. It was a typical November night, forty degrees or so with a light, steady rain. I walked up to Broadway and then north a half-dozen blocks to Higgins, one of the best known Pacific Northwest “farm to table” restaurants. I can’t remember eating, but I guess I did, and an hour or so later I was back on the wet streets, walking down Salmon Street to the Willamette River waterfront. I walked the length of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the west side of the river and crossed the Steel Bridge to the East Side Esplanade. It was getting late, but there were plenty of Portlanders out on a rainy weekday night—walkers, runners, and bikers, all oblivious to the steady rain. I walked on, pondering my situation. Was I ready to put my faith and possibly my life in the hands of a doctor I had met less than ten hours earlier? It was hard to grasp, but the more I turned his statistics and his logic over in my head, the more sense it made.

      I returned to the hotel sometime after 2:00 a.m., took a hot shower, and fell asleep quickly, to my surprise. I woke without an alarm at 6:15 the next morning, and felt amazingly well rested. A weird feeling of calm and confidence had come over me. I was also starving. As I ate bacon and eggs and drank good strong Portland coffee, I realized from where my calm confidence was coming. I had made my decision without consciously knowing it.

      I would put my life in Dr. Daneshmand’s hands, play offense, and have the surgery.

                               

                                                    *************************

“As a Stage 4 melanoma survivor, I found myself deeply moved by – and profoundly grateful for – Frank Sadowski's honest and enlightening account of what it's really like inside the cancer experience. But more than that, simply as a reader, I was enthralled with his effortless gift for compelling storytelling. Back to Life is full of humor, suspense, and grit, a medical drama that brims with heart and soul.”

-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, staff writer at Salon.com and author of Gimme Shelter and A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer.