Dirty Bombshell: From Thyroid Cancer Back to Fabulous! [Paperback]

How readers will respond to Dirty Bombshell will depend largely on their own personal circumstances - most notably whether they themselves (or someone close to them) have thyroid cancer or not. For those readers with the disease, their reaction is likely to be further affected by the stage of their treatment at the time of reading and whether they are being treated in the USA. Readers in the UK should be aware that the treatment regimes for administering radioactive iodine in this country are completely different and so should not expect to be be dosed up and then sent home the same day with a warning from 'Homeland Security'.

I've read this three times now - the first time I was post-surgery-pre-radiation and I didn't like it. I was angry and annoyed and wanted to scream at people 'Don't read this' which is actually pretty symptomatic of how emotional a lot of people get when they've just had an essential organ sliced out of their neck. I had wanted a book I could offer my mother which would reassure her that I'd be OK and that everything would work out fine and Dirty Bombshell was rather too melodramatic for my taste. I feared mum wouldn't get past Lorna's accounts of pain and anguish and wouldn't believe that I really had sailed through without either. I feared she'd be so put off by the traumatic bits that she'd not get to the rebirth and renewal that came after.

The second time I read it was a few months later - the scars were healed, the radiation behind me, I was waiting for the closest thing to an 'all clear' that any thyroid cancer sufferer will get. This time my perspective was very different. I was able to set the more dramatic bits to one side and to focus on what's most important about this book. It's not the pain and the anger that matter - it's what you do with them afterwards. Lorna used her cancer to inspire her to make a difference - to raise funds for holidays for children in Belarus caught up in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, to tell others with or without cancer that you don't have to let an illness stop you in your tracks; in short to remind people that good things come out of bad experiences.

The third time I read was when Lorna sent me a copy of the book for Christmas. I'd previously read it on kindle. The first kindle edition had been riddled with typos and had been updated. As a result of my early damning comments on her book, I got to know Lorna. She tracked me down, we had a damned good email argument and soon became firm friends. She understands my concerns that the dramatic early stages can be frightening to people early in their treatment and I learned that the nasty stuff is not what this book is really about - it's less about the hole you fall into and more about the journey to climb out of that hole and then use the hole itself to inspire you up the next mountain.

For UK based readers - and this is a review for amazon.co.uk, so that's relevant - I shave off the fifth star and give this four stars mostly because of the risk that the differences in the treatment between US and UK hospitals can be confusing and because of my ongoing concern that it can frighten those too early in their treatment. If your treatment is behind you and you're looking for something to remind you that just because you had cancer it's not an excuse to sit on your bum and feel sorry for yourself, then this is the book you need. I'd have to give it 10 out of 10 for inspirational power.