Items related to Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other...

Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences - Hardcover

Pfeffer, Gila

 
9781891011627: Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences

Synopsis

By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost both parents to cancer. She underwent genetic testing and, after learning that she carried the BRCA1 gene, decided to have a double mastectomy. That choice saved her life. This memoir follows her journey to break the cycle of death in her family. After becoming a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, she grows up, falls in love, and becomes a mother, before her life is derailed yet again. Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast. After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal, thirty-five-year-old mother of four. Drenched in Gila’s dark humor, honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, leaning in to her Jewish faith, and leaving a better legacy for her children than the one she inherited.

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About the Author

Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American writer and humorist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Today.com, and elsewhere. Gila's monthly "Feel It on the First" campaign reminds women to prioritize their breast health. She splits her time between New York City and London.

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