It finishes with “Bonus Tracks” – “5 Things to
Say When You Don’t Know What to Say,” applicable not only to a cancer patient
but also to any serious situation; “8 Things Those Facing Crisis Can’t Tell You
(But Wish They Could);” “6 Lessons I Learned from Crisis;” “A Letter from Leif,”
Feinberg’s husband and chief caregiver; and a playlist of music to accompany
each chapter.
Each of the tracks (well, perhaps not the
playlist) could have been books. Instead, they’re short, succinct summaries,
wisdom learned the very hardest way – the wisdom that comes from living an
experience that at many points could have ended in death.
It was the bonus tracks, in fact, that punched
home something I knew from the beginning of the book but which I don’t think I
acknowledged. Books are objects, yes, objects you hold in your hands or view on
an e-reader like Kindle. You enjoy them or you don’t; you learn from them or
you don’t. Good books become part of you; the best books change your life.
Fight
Back with Joy is a giving book. Feinberg gives away a good
part of herself in this book. One of the lessons she learned from her fight
with breast cancer is that serious illness changes you. She may have been a
giving person before it; she is a different giving person after it, a person
who gives with God’s sense of giving.
It is a generous book. That’s not a redundant
statement. Feinberg is lavish with her giving in this book. Little is excluded.
If you want to know what experimental chemotherapy is like, or what to expect
when you first look in the mirror after a double mastectomy, you will find it
here. Or what you experience when you hair falls out in clumps.You want to know
how difficult a cancer fight is for the primary caregiver, you will find that,
too.
It is an honest book. Feinberg gets angry. She
gets angry with God, with friends who don’t know what to say so they stop
coming around, with her family, and with herself. There were days and times
when she wanted to curl up in a ball and die.
 |
| Margaret Feinberg |
It is a courageous book. Even being on the
other side of the cancer experience, and having survived the cancer, its
treatment, and related surgeries, it is clear that Feinberg never quit,
although there were times when she wanted to. She fought, she fought with
everything she had, everything her husband had, what friends and family had.
She fought, too, with what God had, and what He had from the beginning was no
guarantee she would survive. She fought with faith.
And Fight
Back with Joy is a profoundly human book. Feinberg made a choice early on
in dealing with the disease. She would fight with joy. There were days when there
was no joy left, and yet it was still there. One of those days, when she found
despair, led her to give away red balloons to fellow cancer patients and their
families. She discovered the joy again, enough to continue the fight. And it is
often the joy of a child, an adult who learns the joy of being a child of God.
This is a book for those who suffer a serious
illness, and those who don’t. This is a book for caregivers to learn what to
expect, and for those who are never called upon to be caregivers. This is a
book for women and for men. It is about shock, and fear, and joy, and
depression, and despair, and faith, and giving in, and fighting on when there’s
little left to fight with.
This is a book that will change you.
Jason Stasyszn and Sarah Salter have been
leading us in a discussion on Fight Back with
Joy. Today concludes the book. To see more posts on the “Bonus Tracks,”
please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.
