This wonderful woman totally gets me, almost scarey. At the age of 28 I was diagnosised with stage 3 BC. I was told that I will not make it 5 years with my prognosis. I too did the horrid red devil in my standard first 6 monthsofchemo.ThenI did a Stem Cell(2-1-00)along with rads. I am two years out of treatment and going through the horrid scans and watching and waiting that she did. It is about time someone told it like it is. Those of us that are called so lovingly as premies...under the age of 40, are literally giving a death sentence, never to see our children grow up. I thank you Christina for opening the worlds eyes to the reality of this beast. Maybe our children never go through this!!!!!!
Lovingly,
Baby Girl

This was a terrific book. I am not sure what inspired me to purchase "Seeing the Crab", but it honestly changed my life. I have been thinking about switching careers and pursuing medicine, and this book helped confirm it. Middlebrook was brutally honest about all of her various accounts with cancer. It gave a wonderful insight of what therapy is like, how important it is to have a strong support group of family and freinds, and the battle of everyday life with cancer. In my family, I have had two grandfathers die of lung cancer, and a third grandfather is now suffering from the same disease. Although the area in which the cancer is located is different, the treatment is more or less the same, as is the pain they go through. This book gave me such a deeper understanding for what my grandfather has been experiencing, and the knowledge of what to say when we are together. I thank Middlebrook for her honesty, since it is helping me in my own family situtions. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who has cancer or knows someone who does. It will really change the way you think and treat those with this disease.

I read this book to better understand what my sister is going through and what she may face in the future. Anyone with a friend or relative with advanced breast cancer should read it. We try to "minimize" what is happening to them, and we tell them to keep a positive attitude, and we deny the reality of the seriousness of the disease, and the outcome. We tell them they look good, and try to give them false hope of surviving cancer. As the author pointed out, this makes them very angry, as though we are discounting what is happening to them. We need to be there for them and to listen. Just because they are in treatment for this dreaded disease, it doesn't mean they will survive it. The author knew she would likely not survive, and that her treatments, as horrific as they were, were just "buying her more time." This was a sad, but "real" story. Very powerfully written. I could not put it down.

Ms. Middlebrook is told in 1991 that she has Stage IV (terminal) breast cancer.Her memoir spares nothing. She is relentless and graphical in her descriptions of the disease and, most especially, its treatment. The account is powerful and very personal.Not just in the detailing of her experience with the disease and the dramatic and extreme treatments, but also in her sharing of her feelings about her interactions with friends, family members and strangers. Ms Middlebrook's prose is vivid and, I found, often moving. The reader gains a new appreciation for what it is like to come to grips with ones mortality. Despite the seeming grimness of the subject matter, the message is somehow uplifting while being totally honest about the ultimate outcome for the author

This is a wonderful and inspirational book. It follows the story of a woman with cancer. Its a very deep story. The author makes you ask yourself if you can end with cancer. Christina is a very strong and admirable woman. As soon as you read it you will not want to put it down.

By describing her experience with illness so candidly, Middlebrook offers a profound mirror for those of us who have beloveds with cancer. I was able to see how my dread of this disease, and of my best friend suffering and dying from it, was keeping me from being authentic with her. I recommend this book for anyone who has a loved one on the cancer journey, when you are ready to get real.