Resources



Resources


This is a list of resources I’ve found helpful. There isn’t much about undifferentiated endometrial sarcoma, or uterine sarcoma. Sometimes, the info at one place doesn’t quite match up to the info at another place, but the general info seems to be similar. Maybe the differences spring from the lack of research done on this type of cancer, due to the rarity? Dunno.
Websites

Books I’ve Been Reading
  • When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi. This is the memoir of a neurosurgeon in his 30s who discovered he had late-stage lung cancer. He died two years later at age 37. He had never smoked, which illustrates the capriciousness of cancer. His writing is courageous, luminous, touching. He mostly wrote about finding meaning in a life cut short, and  I found myself crying for him and for me.
Some quotes from this book: (pages are hardcover edition)
“… Coming in close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely.” p. 131
“The monolithic uncertainty of my future was deadening; everywhere I turned, the shadow of death obscured the meaning of any action.” p. 149
“The way forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help. What was I supposed to do with that day?” p. 161
“Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence – and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire.” p. 196
  • Memoir of a Debulked Woman, by Susan Gubar. This memoir was more problematic for me but still offered insight into gynecological cancers and their treatment. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2008 and is still alive as of this post (June 2016). “Debulking” is the removal of a cancerous tumor, or as much of it as possible, often along with some organs. She mentions many poems and other memoirs that she has found, along with medical studies, so this book is a good reference for future reading. She includes listings of “Source Notes and”Works Cited.”
Some quotes (page numbers are from the hardback)
“Life at any price does not seem a meaningful goal, a conviction that had struck me when I glimpsed the twisted and bandaged catatonics parked, glassy-eyed, in wheelchairs along the corridors of my mother’s health pavilion.” p. 105
“Remission, I could tell, would always have an invisible question mark after it. No one can predict how long it will last, or, for that matter, when it actually starts.” p. 214
“What exactly will I experience after my year of so of remission? Given my secular background, doubtfulness about what happens after death takes less hold of my imagination that doubtfulness about what will actually happen during my dying and at my death. Perhaps one cannot approach the idea of one’s own death until it ripens.” p.225
“On some days it is hard to convince myself that I am not being paranoid when I think that there is something inside me that I can neither feel nor see and that this something is still out to murder me.” p. 238
“Even for those of us dedicated to acknowledging our own demise, it is difficult to negotiate a vertiginous divide. Theoretically we may understand that an acceptance of death will ease or enhance to dying process, but viscerally many of us cling to the existence we have been granted and to the people and places we cherish in that existence, for what else can we comprehend?” p. 254

 Updated September 3, 2016

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