I’ve been reading Susan McBride’s books for quite a while and always enjoyed her writing style. She writes with lots of humor and her murder/mystery novels are top notch.
Last week I saw that my library had “In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After 40” as an e book and I was compelled to borrow it. My good friend, who spent years fighting a blood cancer, multiple myeloma, which turned into Breast Cancer, had passed a day or so before I found the book.
Susan McBride and I are “friends” on Facebook and we’ve been following each other for a few years. She never hides anything from her friends and fans so I knew she had discovered her Breast Cancer about 12 years ago but when my friend passed from it earlier this month and I found Susan’s book I knew I had to read it.
No cancer is easy to deal with and Ms. McBride was incredibly forthcoming telling readers everything she had to deal with. The lumpectomy she went through, then when more cancer cells were found she had to undergo yet another operation. I won’t even begin about her radiation treatments which caused her skin to burn, bubble, turn some weird color, and cause her massive pain.
And while doing all this she was getting ready to marry her now husband, Ed, who is a little younger than her, maybe 12 years younger. (Go Susan!) Ed was her main support during all of this along with Ms. McBride’s mother and Ed’s mother.
More than anything, Susan and Ed wanted to have a baby but Susan was in her 40’s and sometimes it’s tough to become pregnant when you’re heading into your middle years. Then there was the cancer and her treatments that she had to consider.
The author did become pregnant but soon miscarried. Eventually she and Ed had a beautiful little girl, Emily Alice. Susan shows lots of pictures of this sweet child on her Facebook page and Emily really is a cutie.
“In The Pink” is maybe 120 pages long and can easily be read in one day. It’s something that all women should read. Susan was very lucky with her cancer even though it was not easy to fight, cancer is never easy to fight. Unfortunately, I know too many women who fought Breast Cancer and lost: my aunt, my two cousins, and friends. I also have friends who have won the battle … kind of. One woman I know has been in remission for a few years.
I wish I knew about this book last year when my friend was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I would have bought it for her. It’s important for women to know that there is hope and that there are women who have beaten the disease and didn’t let the cancer stop them from their dreams of marriage, children, and writing their next best selling novel.
I give Susan McBride a ton of credit for writing this short book. It must have been very hard to remember and actually write about what she went through and what she’s still going through. Yes, you can beat cancer but you always have to keep an eye open because those nasty cells can come by for another visit at any time.
“In The Pink” is a positive book and not just for victims of cancer but for everyone, mostly women though, who have been told that once you hit 40 there’s more of a chance of getting hit by lightning than finding a husband; or that once you’re a little older you can’t have a baby; or that you cannot do something that you really want to do.
And while I’m talking about Susan, here’s the link to a review I wrote of her book, “Walk Into Silence.”
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