Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness (Conversations in Medicine and Society) | 
| Author: Kathlyn Conway
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1219537
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0472032356
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1969940092
EAN: 9780472032358
ASIN: 0472032356
Publication Date: April 23, 2007
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Amazon.com
When Kathlyn Conway was diagnosed with breast cancer and lymphoma, her reaction was not one of weakness or resignation so much as indignation. The 40-year-old mother of two had already survived a bout with Hodgkin's disease in her youth. To have to face the terrible course of chemotherapy, as well as the fear and uncertainty, amid the travails of her normal routine, seemed sheer agony. As a professional psychotherapist, Conway had training that provided her some insight, but it could not stave off the growing sense of despair that came as she grew sicker. Incredible in its steely look at life and death, Kathlyn Conway's book achieves the writer's essential task, putting her experience into unyielding, unforgettable prose.
Product Description
Praise for Ordinary Life:
“It reads like a novel, but Kathy Conway’s journal of three cancers is the smartest kind of self-help: it gives us permission to be wise or whiney, strong or self-indulgent, whatever it takes to get through the dark nights of chemo and dread.”
—Robert Lipsyte, columnist, New York Times and American Health
“Ordinary Life is a brave book . . . the kind of journey so many, many women are living through—with spirit, heart and courage—with vision and in community.”
—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt
Ordinary Life is a frank portrait of one woman’s experience of living through three cancers, from diagnosis through treatment and on to recovery.
Unlike the usual self-help book that portrays illness as a transformative experience in which the individual ultimately prevails physically, spiritually, and socially, Ordinary Life isn’t afraid to inhabit and explore the nightmare world of human emotion evoked by life-threatening disease. Kathlyn Conway shows all sides of her reaction to a deadly illness. Often she is despairing, angry, lonely, terrified, and raging against her disease and its implications. Hers is a journey to the heart of darkness into which illness can take any individual. Yet Conway’s very act of courage and honesty in exposing her fear reveals how normal such feelings are.
Kathlyn Conway is a practicing psychotherapist who lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Believing That Everyone Is Unique - Think Fof Yourself January 19, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the most important books ever written by the brilliant Kathlyn Conway in a most difficult genre, Memoir. Memoirs are not autobiographies that tell-all, so to speak. They are slices of life; particularly a unique life as one would hope we all are experiencing. Ms. Conway braved almost unimaginable trauma, pain, tragedy, and loss in HER way - something that is sadly lacking today. Bottomline, thank goodness there are still Memoirs like this that say - THINK FOR YOURSELF!! Bravo Kathlyn, it takes incredible guts these days to do that even in the best of times!!
 whine, whine, whine November 24, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was disappointed. I wasn't looking for a "silver lining" book, but i thought a psychotherapist who was very clear about sharing her credentials (as well as the ethnicity of every doctor with whom she came in contact) would have had more insight into her depression. She shunned therapy for herself and eschewed medication too. Her husband as well, who sounds like a saint, seemed to be clinically depressed but no one suggested medication. I too have had 4 battles with cancer, all primary breast cancers, and I did feel grateful for the DIEP now available that wasn't when Conway had her breast reconstruction. So while I felt for her situation, I expected more insight into her despair. What did she read at the time? Only Susan Love's book -- which is perfect -- but someone else had to suggest it. I would have expected her to research to a fare-thee-well and to read insights others could offer. There are much better books out there (e.g. Arthur Frank's At The Will of the Body, Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjory Williams) for people facing cancer diagnosis and who are highly intelligent. There's no arc here and nothing learned, nor anything that can be learned by the reader. She's probably better as a therapist, less self-absorbed. Maybe more distance from the events might have produced more inisights. Who knows? I just know I was disappointed.
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