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STRIPPED: Cancer, Culture, and the Cloud of Unknowing
I’m a lawyer turned writer, a Catholic convert, and a sober alcoholic. In 2000, I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The good news: a small tumor; the least advanced stage. Still, doctors recommended surgery, radiation, high-dose chemo, and five years of the aggressive hormone drug Tamoxifen.
Terrified of dying, yet determined to steer my own course, I began researching. I found that chemo could kill, radiation could cause secondary cancers, Tamoxifen had severe side effects, and long-term studies on any of those treatments was virtually nil.
STRIPPED is a memoir about coming to the decision to have the tumor surgically removed—and to forego all further treatment. To love this world with all my heart, even as I know I’ll be leaving it one day, is to dwell at the intersection of a cross where mystery, paradox, and a sense of humor meet.
Which is maybe why the very best thing to come out of that dark-night-of-the-soul year was the phone call I made to my friend Brad the night I got the diagnosis. “Brad!” I keened. “I have it! I have cancer!”
“That sucks,” he replied. “Could it have been that time I smoked in your car?”
Terrified of dying, yet determined to steer my own course, I began researching. I found that chemo could kill, radiation could cause secondary cancers, Tamoxifen had severe side effects, and long-term studies on any of those treatments was virtually nil.
STRIPPED is a memoir about coming to the decision to have the tumor surgically removed—and to forego all further treatment. To love this world with all my heart, even as I know I’ll be leaving it one day, is to dwell at the intersection of a cross where mystery, paradox, and a sense of humor meet.
Which is maybe why the very best thing to come out of that dark-night-of-the-soul year was the phone call I made to my friend Brad the night I got the diagnosis. “Brad!” I keened. “I have it! I have cancer!”
“That sucks,” he replied. “Could it have been that time I smoked in your car?”
220 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 16, 2014
3 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Heather King
13 books76 followersHeather King is an essayist, memoirist, and blogger. Raised on the coast of New Hampshire, she struggled with alcoholism for many years, got sober in 1987, and converted to Catholicism in 1996.
She is the author of nine books of essay and memoir, and has recorded over 30 slice-of-life commentaries for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
She also speaks nationwide, writes a weekly arts and culture column for “Angelus,” the archdiocesan newspaper of LA, and a monthly column on unsung saints for “Magnificat” magazine.
Her work, which she roughly defines as "the tragicomedy of the cross," ranges in subject from addiction to vocational crises, conversion, food, money, cancer, unrequited love, prayer and healing from abortion.
She lives in Pasadena, CA. For more info and her blog, visit Heather King: Mystery, Smarts, Laughs.
She is the author of nine books of essay and memoir, and has recorded over 30 slice-of-life commentaries for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
She also speaks nationwide, writes a weekly arts and culture column for “Angelus,” the archdiocesan newspaper of LA, and a monthly column on unsung saints for “Magnificat” magazine.
Her work, which she roughly defines as "the tragicomedy of the cross," ranges in subject from addiction to vocational crises, conversion, food, money, cancer, unrequited love, prayer and healing from abortion.
She lives in Pasadena, CA. For more info and her blog, visit Heather King: Mystery, Smarts, Laughs.
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