By John Leifer

After You Hear It’s Cancer

A Guide to Navigating the Difficult Journey Ahead

Nonfiction

When your doctor utters the word “cancer”, life changes in an instant. It is a moment when time stands still, a moment laden with anxiety and uncertainty. A new journey is beginning, and it is one for which you are likely ill prepared.

For a newly diagnosed patient, it is like going on a trip without knowing the destination or method of transportation, with no map to guide you and no planned arrival time. It is little wonder that patients often feel overwhelmed and unable to participate in critical decisions about their care. Our logical minds stop working just when we need to be thinking with absolutely clarity about our next steps.

After You Hear It’s Cancer is a survival guide for this difficult time. It helps you see through the initial fog of distress, anticipate the curves and bends in the road ahead, and make the right decisions for you and your family. This book covers a broad range of topics: from the selection of your care team to critical decisions at the end of treatment.

You will find important information on:

Understanding your diagnosis and treatment options
How to select your cancer care team and facility for treatment
The importance of second opinions
What to do when you are presented with multiple options for treatment
How to anticipate and manage the side-effects of treatment
How to manage the emotional roller-coast of cancer
What to do when cancer treatment seems unaffordable
How to care for your family caregivers
What happens when initial treatments fail
Understanding clinical trials
The challenges that await cancer survivors
The importance of hope throughout the journey

The book is divided into three sections so that patients may read those sections that are most relevant to them.

Buy This Book

”

John and Lori Leifer have provided an insightful and compassionate navigation path from diagnosis to closure after you hear it’s cancer. Take the journey with them, it’s well worth it.

– Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, FACS, 17th Surgeon General of the United States; Distinguished Professor of Public Health, University of Arizona

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If you are a cancer patient, caregiver, or a cancer care provider, this is one book you must read! This is an excellent, comprehensive discussion of the journey a cancer patient takes once they hear “It’s Cancer”.

– Daniel P. McKellar, MD, FACS, Chair, Commission on Cancer

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After You Hear It’s Cancer provides a wealth of information to assist patients and their families navigate the complicated cancer care system and to participate in the decision making process for their own care. The patient stories interwoven throughout the book make the experience personnel, real, and understandable.

– Robert W. Carlson, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center Chief Executive Officer, National Comprehensive Cancer Network

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It is rare to find a book that speaks so clearly to such a variety of constituents, and it would have great value to health care workers, patients and families/caregivers along the whole cancer journey.

– Health Progress: Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States

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People who are told they have cancer can feel swept into a dizzying landscape of doctors’ appointments, diagnostic tests, procedures, and treatments, as well as seemingly irrational insurance requirements, forms, and bills. All the while a foreboding distant thunder and storm clouds threaten life itself. After You Hear It’s Cancer is a reliable GPS and bright light with which to navigate that terrain. This hopeful, empowering book is worth giving to every person diagnosed with cancer

– Ira Byock, MD, director of the Providence Institute for Human Caring; professor, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine; author of Dying Well and The Best Care Possible

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I think a word to describe After You Hear It’s Cancer as a whole would be ’empowering.’

– Health Progress: Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States

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The best time to read After You Hear It’s Cancer is long before you or a loved one is ever diagnosed with this difficult disease. John and Lori Leifer’s explanations and descriptions are given in a concise, clear, and chronological manner. The information contained in this book will prepare you to help your friends, family, or yourself should any of you hear the words, ‘You have cancer.’

– Annette Bloch, co-founder, R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation

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In short, everything for the cancer journey is readily available in this book — a very valuable resource indeed.

– Health Progress: Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States

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A cancer diagnosis marks the beginning of a long, challenging journey through alien territory. Leifer, a health-care administrator and founder of the Leifer Report, has written an informative guidebook for that journey, intended to help patients ‘navigate a complex health-care system, feel empowered to make astute decisions at difficult junctures, and manage the emotional turbulence along the way.’

– Library Journal Review

Best Selling Author

John Leifer

John Leifer is a senior health care executive, consultant, academic, and writer. He is the author of The Myths of Modern Medicine: The Alarming Truth About American Health Care and After You Hear It’s Cancer: A Guide to the Difficult Journey Ahead.

John is also an accomplished fiction author – writing thrillers that draw upon his experiences with key governmental agencies and scientists, including serving on a presidential panel led by former national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.

More About JOhn

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