Book in the Spotlight: Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr
On today's blog, I decided to approach it a little differently with a book review. I recently finished reading Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr. It was both humorous and inspirational.
Kris Carr was diagnosed with an incurable and inoperable cancer called epithelioid hemangioendothelioma. A rare vascular cancer affecting the lining of the blood vessels in her liver and lungs. Unfortunately for Kris, she was stage four (there is no stage five).
Kris decided to take her health into her own hands. Once she found out the news, she went directly to Whole Foods, an organic health food store. She drastically changed the way she ate - only anything leafy and green.
Sadly, Kris would have to live with the cancer for the rest of her life. She made the most of her situation and that's when she decided to document her experiences with cancer.
In her book, Kris brings her readers along on a wild ride of all the emotional and physical ups and downs of having cancer. She provides her experiences with her disease along with input from other cancer survivors. She even made her health roller coaster into a film! How bad-ass of a survivor is she?!
Readers learn tips and tricks that can help them in their process and adjusting to life with a disease, from a rare cancer like Kris' to the more common cancers. She provides advice from things such as what to eat, how to get in tune with your spiritual side, to how being bald is beautiful and how to still have (or chose not to have) a relationship with someone while going through cancer.
Kris' writing style was both hilarious and serious. She takes a crappy situation and turns it into something both silly and that her readers can relate to.
Although the book is targeted at people (young adults) going through cancer treatments, it is good insight for people that are playing the role as caregiver. It's also good for family, friends or partners to read.
Personally, I liked how she wrote about all aspects of going through cancer - not just treatments. She provided examples from real people who went through real experiences.
I disliked how she focused a lot on eating organically. Yes, this may be possible for some people and her personal type of cancer, but like most cancers, we don't get away as lucky as she did (she didn't have any treatments). I'm not saying she's lucky by any means, she did have cancer after all, rather, I'm saying is her experience was different than most. Most people go through brutal chemo (myself included), radiation, surgeries, etc. and all they want to do is vomit or eat excessively because of their treatments (steroids for the win!). In reality, no one really has time to go out and buy fresh produce and make sure it is indeed organic when the majority of your time is stuck in a hospital bed. But, if you can and want to, all the power to you!
Overall, the book was very informative and I did learn a lot about different people's roads to recovery with cancer. I enjoyed that it was targeted for young adult women - that's something we don't always find easily.
I would give this book a 3.5 out of 5. It certainly provided lots of insight!
