Seeing the Crab: A Memoir of Dying

by Christina Middlebrook

Hardcover, 1996

Status

Available

Call number

XXII Mid

Collection

XXII. PERSONAL STORIES

Publication

Basic Books (1996), Edition: First Edition, 224 pages

Description

Middlebrook was not quite fifty when she was told that a lump in her breast was not only malignant, but had already metastasized. When Middlebrook's husband asked the surgeon for an honest prognosis, she told him his wife had a 50 percent chance of surviving two more years. Unlike the many upbeat books that end with the author triumphing over his or her illness through traditional or alternative medicine, or by some variation of mind over matter, this book offers no naive conclusion. What it does give is a picture of family love, including lessons in dealing with pain so real and unflinching that readers will cling to Middlebrook even as she takes them right to the edge of the abyss. Seeing the Crab is filled with unforgettable vignettes - of the author unable to activate the automatic faucets in an airport bathroom (as if the machine already sees her as gone), facing up to her daughter's refusal to get a driver's license (so that her mother cannot leave her), and coming to appreciate a friend's brutally honest words: "This is life's biggest transition. Go for it."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member joyriders

I don't know why I didn't finish this... I wonder if she died?

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LibraryThing member Rascalstar

This book is about one woman's experience with breast cancer. Although I don't have cancer, I found the book important on several levels. It helps those of us who haven't been through it understand what it's like and more importantly, how we should change our behavior toward anyone with a terminal

illness. Patients who have fought breast cancer will identify with some of this, but many breast cancers can be beaten. If you or someone you know has metastatic cancer and/or has had a stem cell transplant, the book will speak to you. Although every person's experiences are different, and Christina speaks to that at the end of the book, the truths shine through the pages to all of us, not only cancer patients. We need to face death, whether our own or that of a loved one, and stop trying to deny it. The pat-pat, it's going to be all right approach is an insult to a terminal patient. If we're healthy, we need to stop thinking of ourselves, protecting ourselves, and understand and care about what the terminal patient goes through, both physical and mental. We can't be in their shoes, but we can do a lot better than most of us do now. This is a powerful book, honest, not tiptoeing around the subject. It's one person's experience that we can learn from. People with serious illness need people who will listen and do simple, loving things; they don't necessarily need to hear rah-rah positive words all the time.

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LibraryThing member kristykay22

This is a memoir from a woman who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in her late 40s back in the early 90s. While MBC is still not a great diagnosis, the treatment options were extremely limited 30 years ago. Middlebrook undertook a grueling experimental therapy of high dose chemo followed

by a stem cell transplant in order to buy herself a few years (Note: this kind of treatment isn't done anymore -- after many breast cancer patients and doctors pushed for access to the expensive and intense treatment before results of clinical trials were available, it was ultimately found not to statistically increase overall survival). She brings the reader through her treatment experience, the fear and stress of waiting for a progression that she knew would eventually come, and the struggles of facing her mortality in her early 50s.

Middlebrook was a Jungian psychologist and I particularly liked the final chapter ("The Dier") and her discussion of the Ego vs. the Psyche. A quote: My ego holds as tenaciously to life as anyone else's. I cannot imagine this world without me in it, or at least I couldn't in the beginning. There is nothing I, or any soldier or doctor or commander-in-chief, any director of hematology oncology or the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the oncogene, can do to change how bad I feel about dying in my fifties. My only ally is surrender. I find great relief in surrender. Surrender means I can stop worrying and fretting and figuring out what I am supposed to do. I can forget about beating odds and just live my life. I don't need to work harder than I already have, I tell myself, because I have already done everything that I can and because I didn't do anything wrong in the first place.

This book was published in 1996 and Middlebrook unexpectedly ended up living until the age of 67, dying in 2009. This is both a very personal memoir of a specific woman and her family and treatment decisions at a specific time in history, and also a universal exploration of living with a terminal illness. She does not mince words or hold back her anger and frustration. She can also be very funny and an astute and uncompromising observer of both herself and others. I found a lot I could relate to here, and I really liked Middlebrook's writing style. Recommended for fans of potentially depressing cancer memoirs!

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