Finding Strength

Professor Juanne Clarke has spent her career as a medical sociologist, exploring the public health system and the personal health systems of individuals. One of her books examined how women with breast cancer deal with diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Then her 17-year old daughter Lauren was diagnosed with leukemia, and the theories and paradigms of academe gave way to the real-life struggle of a mother and her daughter for healing and for the best medical treatment possible. Finding Strength details two years in the lives of these two women, from early symptoms and denial, through diagnosis and two years of treatment, to a clean bill of health. Each chapter first describes the events of a particular time and then discusses the literature on the subject, relating to their own experience what medical and sociological researchers have found. The book considers such topics as acknowledging diagnosis, remission induction, having to deal with some health professionals (doctors and nurses) who are blunt and insensitive, discovering the importance of friends and family, of food and faith. The book concludes with an epilogue by Lauren Clarke, who throughout the book has added footnotes to her mother's text where she felt the need to amplify or clarify what her mother has written. During treatment, Lauren was in her last year of high school and first year of university, and she created a magazine for teens with cancer for a creative writing course and also published several articles on living with cancer in her university newspaper. Excerpts from these, as well as some of her poetry on her illness, are included throughout the book. The book also includes an extensive bibliography and list of resources for childhood cancer. A touching personal memoir and an insightful examination of Canada's health-care system, Finding Strength explores one family's response to personal crisis. It will be a source of hope and practical help for anyone in a similar crisis, and will provide a uniquely informed perspective on the needs of patients and their families for health care workers.