I have a very nice support system because I have a big family and even if we don't all live in the same city they send mail :). I've received and read some self help books/videos since becoming ill and sometimes I really like them and other times I don't read them for a long time because I feel too tired. If you get your sick person a book that's about illness then either give them the summary on a piece of paper or wait for them to read it at their leisure. Aunt R3 and Uncle G are really good about being patient, seeing as they know how important this information is - Uncle G has no evidence of cancer after having stage 4 melanoma.Here are my top 4:
- Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan. It's only 139 pages but about 70 pages of text and it was published in 2009. When I go back to teaching, I want to put every page of this book on the walls of my Foods classroom.
- The Happiness Project or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean my Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. It's 289 pages, a little slow but happiness is important and I liked it because it reminded me of grandma Lavender.
- Eating for your Mitchochondria - a video by Dr. Terry Wahls. It's a bit dry, 17 minutes long and might not seem useful but I go back to it all the time because it's about a person who went to the edge and then tried to reverse her illness. She's been physically limited and she came back! I feel proud of her and she's a total stranger. I'm also reading a book called Dying to be Me which might make the list in the future.
- Anticancer: A New Way of Life by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. 222 pages but chock full of graphs and research. I like it because it's about a doctor who is unusual and has lived with brain cancer for over a decade. He, like Dr Wahls, didn't give-up even though he has one of the scariest cancers that you can have. I like that too.
