Uncommonly Common: On Resilience, Waiting Rooms, and Breast Cancer Levity - Paperback

Roughly 13% of us will face a breast cancer diagnosis, but when it's you, you feel very alone. You're not alone, friend.

Uncommonly Common: On Resilience, Waiting Rooms, and Breast Cancer Levity is for those who've received that unwanted diagnosis, love someone facing cancer, or enjoy reading about infusion waiting rooms, handling unsolicited advice, and offending large groups of people. It's about living with a common cancer, yet living uncommonly with resilience, hope, and humor.

Weaving "real time" writing with reflective hindsight, Karla Lewellyn's journey through diagnosis, treatments, and what follows includes

• Filling out medical forms that no one ever looks at
• The subtle differences in pricks, pokes, and prods
• Dealing with Dr. Sad Sack; No Bedside Manner, M.D.; and Dr. Grim Reaper
• Ferocious family, stubborn friends, prayer lists, and precocious pink ribbons
• Dealing with "Brain Fog" (a/k/a "Why did I walk into this room?")
• Surprising perks of the infusion room
• Football, driving, and hurricane cancer analogies
• The mystery of why an 18-team conference is called "The Big Ten"
• When people tell you "You look good!" they really mean "You don't look good; you just don't look as bad as I thought you would"
• Campaigning for deleting the redundancy of the word invasive from invasive carcinoma ("Tell them they have cancer. Don't patronize them.")
• Ringing the bell, even if you don't want to
• Treatment bait and switch (a/k/a "You can't handle the truth!")
• Finding beauty in the ordinary
• The never-ending quest for synonyms of "journey"
• How truly beautiful the word negative can be