Bald Is Better with Earrings: A Survivor's Guide to Getting Through Breast Cancer

by Andrea Hutton

Overview

The breast cancer guide every woman needs for herself, her best friend, and her sister—a warm, practical, relatable handbook, that dispels the terror, taking you step-by-step through the process, from diagnosis to post-treatment.

When Andrea Hutton was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wanted to know everything. She voraciously read books, articles, and websites and talked to everyone she knew. But nothing prepared her for what the surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation would feel like. Were there tricks that could ease her pain and discomfort? What was “fatigue” and how would it affect her? At what exact moment would her hair fall out and how? Hutton wanted what she could not find: a clear how-to guide for the cancer girl she had become.

Bald Is Better with Earrings is Hutton’s answer for women diagnosed with breast cancer: a straightforward handbook, leavened with humor and inspiration, to shepherd them though the experience. Warm and down-to-earth, Hutton explains what to expect and walks you through this intense and emotional process: tests, surgery, chemo, losing your hair and shaving your head, being bald, radiation treatments.

Hutton offers a wealth of invaluable advice—from tricks for surviving chemo, to treating your skin during radiation, to keeping track of meds—and includes a practical list of tips for each stage of the process at the end of every chapter. Compassionate, friendly, and shaped by Hutton’s first-hand knowledge, Bald Is Better with Earrings is the comprehensive, essential companion for anyone dealing with breast cancer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062375674
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	224
File size:	397 KB

About the Author

A graduate of Duke University and an interior designer, Andrea Hutton was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 at the age of forty-one. Andrea is now five years out and cancer-free. In addition to continuing her interior design career for select clients, Andrea is a marketing and management consultant. She lives in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband and two children.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 My Story 1

The Lumps

Top 5 Tips for When You Are Diagnosed

2 Tests 8

MRI

Top 5 Tips for Your First MRI

Pet Scan

Top 5 Tips for Pet/Ct Scans

Bone Scan

Top 5 Tips for a Bone Scan

3 Results 21

Telling Your Family and Friends

Sharing the News

Choosing a Surgeon

Top 5 Tips for Choosing a Surgeon

4 Surgery 34

One Lump or Two? and Other Agonizing Choices

Reconstruction

Top 5 Tips for Choosing Your Surgery

Before

During

The Drain

After

Getting Dressed

Postsurgical Follow-Up

Top 5 Tips for Before and After a Mastectomy

Bra Shopping

Lymph Nodes and Your Arm

Top 5 Tips for Preventing Lymphedema

The Port

Accessing the Port/Lab Work

Port Whines - Top 5 Tips for Dealing with a Port

5 Chemotherapy 73

Day One

What to Bring

Top 5 Tips During Chemo

The Chemo Room

Top 5 Tips After Chemo

The Side Effects

Top 5 Tips for Handling Chemo

Complications-And More Side Effects

Hot Flashes

Top 5 Tips for Dealing with Side Effects

Steroids

Top Tip for Steroid Side Effects

Drug Allergies and Adverse Reactions

Top 5 Tips for Understanding Your Treatments

6 Bald Is Better With Earrings 114

To Shave or Not to Shave

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Top 5 Tips for When You Are Going Bald

Getting Wiggy and the Art of Scarf Tying

Top J Tips for Wig Wearers

Growing Back

Top 5 Tips When Your Hair Starts Growing Back

Scarves and Hats

Top 5 Tips for Wearing Scarves and Hats

More Hair

Top 5 Tips for the Growing-Out Stage

7 Radiation 143

Planning and Plotting

Top 5 Tips for the First Radiation Appointment

Preheat

Bake

The Afterburn

Top 5 Tips for Protecting Your Skin During Radiation

8 How "Normal" Is the New Normal? 157

Top 5 Tips for Dealing with People

Dealing with Your Self-Image

Top 5 Tips for Dealing with Your Self-Image

Dealing with Others' Images of You

9 Sex, Drugs, and No More Rock and Roll 171

Top 5 Tips for Handling All the Medications

Sex

Top 5 Tips For Sex and the New You

Partners and Caregivers

Top 5 Tips for Helping Your Caregiver

No More Rock and Roll

Top I Tip for Dealing with Cancer Girl

10 The End of Treatment 183

Chemo Brain

Continuing Treatments

Scar Tissue

Why Doesn't He Call?

Looking Forward

October

Fear of Dying

Top 5 Tips for Getting on with Your Life

Acknowledgments 205

Editorial Reviews

04/06/2015
Breast cancer survivor Hutton offers a wealth of insider knowledge on exactly what to expect of the “emotional and physical roller coaster” involved in battling the disease. Hutton offers both serious and lighthearted suggestions for getting through early testing, advising readers to “never go to a mammogram alone” and rating the flavors of pre-PET/CT scan barium milk (“mocha is the best”). She provides tips for choosing the appropriate surgery and information on breast prostheses, noting wryly that the proprietors of stores selling these tend to be well-endowed women, evidence of a possible “conspiracy.” A chapter on chemotherapy covers preliminaries, aftercare, and side effects before delving into the big conundrum: “how and when to shave your head.” Hutton explains basic care for synthetic and real-hair wigs and compassionately addresses potential feelings of a loss of femininity. She illuminates some less-discussed treatment side effects like “steroid rage,” fingernail breakage, loss of eyelashes, and radiation fatigue. On the interpersonal level, Hutton discusses best practices for telling your family your diagnosis and categorizes different reactions loved ones tend to have, while giving permission to “lash out appropriately.” Finally, Hutton reflects on the ongoing stress of continued screening, noting, “Once you’ve crossed the street, you’re stuck on this side forever.” While there is no universal cancer experience, Hutton covers the most likely scenarios in detailed fashion with grace, empathy, and humor. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Breast cancer survivor Hutton offers a wealth of insider knowledge on exactly what to expect,...[and] while there is no universal cancer experience, Hutton covers the most likely scenarios in detailed fashion with grace, empathy, and humor.” — Publishers Weekly

“This book could be a lifesaver.” — Library Journal

“Straightforward, often humorous, no-nonsense, step-by-step, tip-filled text. No single guide can be all inclusive…but Hutton’s “Top Tips” will help many.” — Booklist

“Bald Is Better With Earrings is exactly what its subtitle promises. In a chatty, girlfriend kind of way, Hutton unflinchingly describes [her journey]. Building on that experience, she offers advice to other patients.” — Washington Post

From the Publisher

Bald Is Better With Earrings is exactly what its subtitle promises. In a chatty, girlfriend kind of way, Hutton unflinchingly describes [her journey]. Building on that experience, she offers advice to other patients.

Washington Post

Straightforward, often humorous, no-nonsense, step-by-step, tip-filled text. No single guide can be all inclusive…but Hutton’s “Top Tips” will help many.

Booklist

Straightforward, often humorous, no-nonsense, step-by-step, tip-filled text. No single guide can be all inclusive…but Hutton’s “Top Tips” will help many.

Booklist

Bald Is Better With Earrings is exactly what its subtitle promises. In a chatty, girlfriend kind of way, Hutton unflinchingly describes [her journey]. Building on that experience, she offers advice to other patients.

Washington Post

05/15/2015
Interior designer Hutton was 41 in 2009 when she became a member of the CSC, Cancer Sucks Club. She went through a year's worth of tests, diagnosis, surgery, and treatment and, in what began as a blog to keep friends and family updated, here lays it all out, in meticulous detail, for those enduring the same experience. Going for a humorous tone, the author describes her cancer journey and supplements it with list upon list of top tips to consider, plus sidebars on everything from fitting a bra to finding just the right scarf. Other titles have sought to personalize the cancer life for the newly diagnosed (e.g., Teresa J. Rhyne's The Dog Lived (and So Will I) and Melanie Young's Getting Things off My Chest), but Hutton digs down to the nittiest and the grittiest, for example, allergic reactions to chemo drugs and the minutiae of port maintenance. VERDICT Readers will be equally overwhelmed and overjoyed by Hutton's prescriptions. This book could be a lifesaver for breast cancer club members.—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Library Journal