Hollye Jacobs RN MS MSW - The silver lining : an insightful guide to the realities of breast cancer

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Text copyright 2014 by Hollye Jacobs

Photographs copyright 2014 by Elizabeth Messina

Compilation copyright 2014 by Hollye Jacobs and Elizabeth Messina

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its authors. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the authors and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it. The authors and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents in this book.

First Atria Books hardcover edition March 2014

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Interior design by Doug Turshen with David Huang

Jacket design by Doug Turshen with David Huang

Jacket art by Elizabeth Messina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013019103

ISBN 978-1-4767-6350-7

ISBN 978-1-4767-4371-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4767-4372-1 (ebook)

For my HOTY & children. You are my ultimate Silver Linings.

HOLLYE JACOBS

For my loving parents, Josephine & Michael.

ELIZABETH MESSINA

A s a happily married wife, mother, palliative care nurse, and social worker living in bucolic Santa Barbara, California, I was stunned by my breast cancer diagnosis (understatement of the century). I mean, really. I was a healthy, happy, vegan-eating, marathon-running thirty-nine-year-old with no family history of breast cancer.

As a bookworm, I first thought, I need the perfect book to get me through this. What I needed was a lifeline, a guide and point of reference, a source of encouragement that was simultaneously honest and informative, practical and supportive, beautiful and serious, realistic and uplifting. No such book existed. So, I decided to write the book that I desperately sought, but could not find, after my breast cancer diagnosis. This book is for you.

The story is fundamentally my journey of self-discovery through illness, finding Silver Linings in life, and celebrating grace and positive thinking from the time of my breast cancer diagnosis through treatment, recovery, and ultimately the celebration of life after breast cancer.

Why Silver Linings? you ask. Well, Ive always been a half-full kind of girl. Its easy to be half-full when life is good, when wondering what to make for dinner is the most pressing issue of the day. However, my half-fullness was first challenged in my professional life as a hospice nurse, caring for both dying adults and dying children, and then in my personal life when I became a cancer patient.

In my clinical practice as a hospice nurse, I vividly remember caring for a woman with breast cancer. She was in her late forties, with two young daughters. I remember playing on the floor of the living room of the hospital unit with the girls, feeling utterly helpless because I didnt know what to say or do with them. After all, I was in my late twenties. I wasnt yet a mother. And I hadnt been trained in talking with children.

Yet, somehow this womanthis dying womanput the staff at ease by talking about all of the positive things in her life, the things that brought her joy, such as watching her children play, the smell of food cooking (even if she couldnt eat it), having a day without pain. She taught the staffand, more important, her daughtersabout resilience and finding Silver Linings and seeing the lighteven a sliverin the darkest circumstances.

Fast-forward to October 2010. When I heard the words You have breast cancer, my first thoughtliterally my first thoughtwas: This could be so much worse. My form of cancer is treatable.