Dispelling the myths: '4 Paths of Cancer' takes readers on a journey

Terry Novak, a retired registered nurse, has a trio of major objectives for her book “4 Paths of Cancer: A Journey Through Myths, Grief, Hope, Love.”

Those objectives are, as Novak puts it, to “demystify, destigmatize and humanize” cancer.

Her book tries to accomplish that for specific groups of people — cancer patients, their loved ones and their caregivers.

Despite Novak’s intended audience, this book should be of interest to readers in general.

Dispelling the myths: '4 Paths of Cancer' takes readers on a journey

The journey is often a personal one. Novak, who lives in Bernalillo, relies heavily on her recollections of patients she has worked with as a cancer research nurse at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center and her own family’s experiences with the disease.

The book begins with a chapter on cancer-related myths, and the author’s sometimes-stated truths in response. Among the categories in this chapter are “Breast Cancer Myths,” “Age Myths,” “Side Effect Myths” and “Lung Cancer Myths.”

Novak cites the myth that only smokers get lung cancer. Not true, she says.

The American Cancer Society, she says, reported that in 2020 about 12% of lung cancers occurred in patients who never smoked.

Second-hand smoke, radon, environmental factors such as air pollution, and other sources can cause lung cancer, Novak writes.

That’s followed by a remembrance unrelated to lung cancer. Novak briefly relates her mother’s addiction to smoking and her death from lymphoma at age 79.

One of the breast cancer myths listed is that men don’t get breast cancer. Novak’s countering truth claims that about 1% of breast cancers occur in men. But the mortality rate is high for men because of the delay in diagnosis and treatment due to the fact that men are embarrassed, in denial or don’t have the resources for mammograms.

The next chapter is the author’s 17-page exploration of grief.

“Grief is felt and experienced differently by everyone. There is no recipe for how to handle it,” Novak writes.

Maybe no recipe, but the author gives readers food for thought for managing grief. This chapter is also divided into sections, one of which is “Grief is a Journey Taken Alone.” In this section, the author devotes more than four pages to how she was filled with guilt for not grieving when her mother died. Novak speculates that grief may even be the absence of emotion.

Hope is the subject of the third chapter. “Hope is the vaccine against guilt and grief,” Novak writes.

Under the section titled “Courageous Hope,” the author tells of a friend diagnosed with bladder cancer at age 77. The involvement of the oncologist, the surgeon, the ostomy nurse and the patient, an advocate for his own care, together contributed to the patient’s survival. His medical story continues: the patient later had quadruple heart bypass surgery. He survived that as well.

Novak says hope combined with faith, attitude, open and honest communication, and proactive medicine were a powerful combination for that patient.

The fourth and final chapter, titled “Love,” opens with a story of a parent coming to the cancer center with her three young boys to begin her clinical trial. The cancer she was being treated for is never mentioned. The woman’s husband was recently deported to Mexico.

Novak decided to have the boys each give their mother a bottle of her study drug. Because this was a time when “Harry Potter” was popular, she told the boys the contents of the bottles held a magic potion. They helped Novak mix the drug and told them it would make their mother feel better. It seemed to have that result. The mother and her boys laughed, and she told them how much she loved them.

Novak said in a phone interview that she purposely did not want to write a book on cancer from the medical standpoint, “but from a human standpoint and how people relate to cancer. People are afraid to talk about cancer. It’s a misrepresented and misunderstood disease.”

Novak said she wanted to tell readers that the person — the patient — they know and love and care about is still there. Their body may have a disease, but their spirit and soul do not.

There’s an afterword with a long list of possible early cancer signs and symptoms.

The book would have benefitted from closer editing.