After You Hear It's Cancer by John Leifer

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.' Chapters cover choosing doctors, managing pain and side effects, using complementary therapies, surviving cancer, choosing to stop treatment, death and dying, and more. Leifer focuses on information to support decision making, offering lists of questions to ask providers and quotes from research findings and patients and caregivers. He offers information that is balanced and medically sound: for example, he describes a valid role for complementary therapies while condemning quackery