Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences

ISBN: 1891011626

Author: Pfeffer, Gila

Condition: New

A sharp, funny, and heartfelt memoir of losing both parents to cancer and the daring choices Gila Pfeffer made to avoid the same early demiseBy the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirmed she carried the BRCA1 gene-which put her at high risk of developing cancer herself. Determined to break the cycle of early death in her family, Gila decides to undergo an elective double mastectomy.This memoir follows her journey as she becomes a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, grows up, falls in love, and enters motherhood, before her life is derailed yet again. Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast.After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal, thirty-five-year-old mother of four. With chutzpah honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, she manages to save her own life.Drenched in Gilas dark humor, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, committing to whats important, and leaving a better legacy than the one you inherited.