by Gloria S. Akande

Created on: December 12, 2009

 “How to Fight Breast Cancer and Win!”  is an innovative book, a physician’s memoir and a breast health primer. The book is written by Deann Akande, M.D., a physician and Board Certified pathologist with over 20 years of experience.  The first 65 pages of the book is a heart felt personal account of Dr. Akande’s ordeal when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in her early thirties and how she took charge of the disease at that time and again how she handle and coped with the disease when it recurred fifteen years later, learning her inner strength and reassessing the meaning of outer and inner beauty. She discusses her treatment, her feelings and the steps she used to attack and fight-off and steps to prevent the recurrence of the horrible disease.

The second part of the book is a breast health primer.  The first part of the breast primer includes the topics of breast anatomy, breast care, the breast self examination, mammography and understanding breast cancer risks and how you can modify those risks. The author discusses what the next steps are once a breast mass is discovered. The author has a forty page chapter on breast pathology with a pictorial atlas of breast pathology displaying how the tumors look, benign and malignant disease. There are also two tables, one on pre-malignant breast and the other on malignant breast with age incidence, treatment and prognosis. The author has a simplified discussion of breast cancer staging and grading and the contents and elements of the surgical pathology report.

The author dedicates forty pages to how chemotherapy works, why it is necessary, the drugs used for the treatment of breast cancer, their side effects and the treatment of the side effects, and a limited discussion of additional drugs which may be needed based on the characteristics of the tumor. The book also contains  limited discussion on targeted therapies and on radiation therapy on how it works and when it is used,  surgical reconstruction and reasons for re-operations; palliative therapies and complementary and alternative therapies. There is a full chapter on nutrition for the purpose of reducing breast cancer risk and its recurrence, which the author follows. The last part of the book is a personal breast cancer journal which contains areas for family history, personal medical history, medications, journal log. The author has also includes a list of questions for you to ask your physicians and questions for personal assessment and development through the ordeal. This book will help you be informed and decisive and to take charge of your health care. 

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