Glioblastoma and anaplastic astrocytoma are two of the most common form of brain tumours in adults. Too often they can be life changing, even life limiting for patients, wreaking devastation on their families.
This readable, moving and non technical guide is your comprehensive patient focussed guide to these obstinate brain cancers.
It covers everything from getting an accurate diagnosis, to dealing with the physical, mental and emotional impact of the disease. From treatment options and how to cope with their side effects, to newly developing techniques and future research.
This book presents an honest and realistic picture, with a personal approach. Featuring dozens of personal testimonies from those with these high grade brain tumours and their loved ones, the book offers information, reassurance and support on these, the most complex of brain tumours.
Gideon Burrows is an award winning author of novels and non-fiction books that aim to make you uncomfortable, allow you recover, and then make you feel completely refreshed.
Or else guilty. Or exhilarated. Or maybe a combination of these things.
Like taking a cold shower.
His near future novels, including Future Shop and Portico, tackle the challenging world of the near future: how social media, the metaverse, virtual reality, multi-player games and more may be sending us to hell. You'll never let your kids on the internet again.
His contemporary novels, including The Illustrator's Daughter and The Spiral, are about families and individuals in difficult situations: whether facing brake-ups, illness, prejudice, mental health breakdown or domestic violence. Through challenging our fundamental believes and values, he aims to make every reader think about their own comfortable lives.
As G D Burrows, he writes action fiction about ninjas. Awesome ninjas, who wear cool ninja gowns, have high tech ninja weapons, and take on the bad guys with their super martial arts skills and techniques. Think James Bond or Jack Reacher – but in full ninja garb, and based in London's East End. That kind of thing.
Gideon is really interested in the future and new technology, as well as science and rationalism. He's written two non-fiction books on the metaverse, and three books on cancer, including This Book Won't Cure Your Cancer, challenging society's assumptions when it comes to the disease.
He trained as a journalist and spent 10 years writing for major UK newspapers and magazines, and then running a copywriting agency.
Gideon is married, lives in east London with three children, and hundreds of worms. He's a keen cyclist, a qualified cycle mechanic and his home office is Pret a Manger.
He loves travelling on trains, eating Indian and Chinese food, and might actually be a ninja at night.
Like everyone else in the world, he drinks lots of coffee and loves the smell of new, unsullied stationery.
Gideon loves giving stuff away.
You'll always find something free at his website, www.gideon-burrows.com, where you can also join his Reader's Club.
My father has just been diagnosed with advanced glioblastoma and I picked up this book to learn more about the disease. While I very much appreciate what Burrows has done here, the book reads a lot like an extended information pamphlet with some personal stories interspersed throughout. The average life expectancy for glioblastoma patients is only 12-18 months, even less for my father. I would have liked to learn more about end of life and what to expect. This book danced around death as much as possible-only briefly dedicating space towards the end. Death is the known result of all glioblastomas and I would have preferred a more head-on approach.
Beginning tomorrow I will be inundated with foreign information I may not have understood had it not been for the foresight and reputable information generously shared through this insightful book. I can now feel more confident in attending my first oncologist appointment knowing possible expectations, correct terminology, and possible treatments for my particular glioblastoma. I deeply appreciated the truthful acknowledgment and reality of how these tumours may present as well as the treatments and outcomes, with the advisement that this book may already be outdated by Jedi so advancements which may still inspire hope or other alternatives to longevity within these diseases. Thank you for your generous time and blogging for those of us beginning a completely different life path. I treasure your hand holding in this moment! Thank you!!
I appreciated the author’s perspective and clear explanation of treatments he received. Scientific explanations accompanied with personal stories of other patients really helped me to understand the myriad of experiences with this type of tumor. If you or a loved one are recently diagnosed I highly recommend giving this a read.
As a patient, the author covers topics that are missed by medical professionals but may concern patients and family: how does radiation therapy feel like? How to understand prognosis data? How to deal with end of life from this disease?
This book is an incredibly informative and compassionate resource for anyone affected by glioblastoma. Written by a patient who set out to understand every aspect of his own diagnosis, it offers a unique and deeply personal perspective alongside well-researched medical information.
A very well written, factual and practical book about Glioblastoma brain tumours. A journey I have just started and can now continue from a better informed viewpoint.
I found this book very useful in helping me understand this type of brain tumour, it’s impact on the sufferer and the way it is treated. The author is himself a sufferer and and the book is interspersed with a number of personal accounts of other people’s experiences of brain tumours, both their own and those of close family members. In fact the book discusses the impact of a brain tumour on other family members.