STRIPPED: Cancer, Culture, and the Cloud of Unknowing

I'm a lawyer turned writer, a Catholic convert, and a sober alcoholic. In 2000, I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The good news: a small tumor; the least advanced stage. Still, doctors recommended surgery, radiation, high-dose chemo, and five years of the aggressive hormone drug Tamoxifen.

Terrified of dying, yet determined to steer my own course, I began researching. I found that chemo could kill, radiation could cause secondary cancers, Tamoxifen had severe side effects, and long-term studies on any of those treatments was virtually nil.

STRIPPED is a memoir about coming to the decision to have the tumor surgically removed--and to forego all further treatment. To love this world with all my heart, even as I know I'll be leaving it one day, is to dwell at the intersection of a cross where mystery, paradox, and a sense of humor meet.

Which is maybe why the very best thing to come out of that dark-night-of-the-soul year was the phone call I made to my friend Brad the night I got the diagnosis. "Brad!" I keened. "I have it! I have cancer!"

"That sucks," he replied. "Could it have been that time I smoked in your car?"