7This memoir does its best to encapsulate the raw emotions and existential uncertainty that tormented and destabilized the author during her first year with cancer. Cancer is incredibly personal and incredibly dehumanizing, and there's no cancer rule book. There are no good choices to make and aspiring to the best bad choice sucks. Embracing the suck is the cancer journey and, ultimately, the unwanted and unrelenting challenge of a lifetime. LeMire wrote this book to memorialize each step of her diagnosis and treatment. She wants to remember that the things that matter revolve around how we treat each other in the worst of times. Strength is not the absence of weakness, strength is responding to weakness with grace, humility and, ultimately, gratitude. She hopes her journal helps or at least resonates with someone else who is facing hard choices among bad alternatives. She also hopes that it gives friends and family members of seriously or terminally ill patients a bird's eye view of how isolating disease can be.