Sometimes You Have to Laugh

This life-affirming poetry and prose speaks to anyone who has been involved in the struggles serious illness brings. Marilyn Stacy writes about her journey on the "cancer train" with honesty, optimism, and a good dash of irony. She uses her experience with breast cancer, waiting rooms, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and recovery to inform, amuse, and encourage the reader, and assures us that the tunnel "does not have to be endlessly dark and terrifying." In poems like "If Life Really is a Stage" and "I hate to be tacky, but" she reminds us that it helps if we can laugh. By sharing the discoveries she made during her journey she fulfills a promise she made to herself to turn this life crisis into an opportunity for good. In this she has succeeded.