Dancing with Breast Cancer: A Memoir in Poems

One out of eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer. What many breast cancer patients don't open up about, read about, or discuss are the fearful moments, the angry moments, and the sometimes funny moments that women experience, beginning with that first scary doctor's appointment.

Freezing-cold mammograms that flatten breasts like two fried eggs. Crushing loneliness. Nightmares about confronting mortality.

But in Dancing with Breast Cancer, Janay Cosner gets real about her journey with the disease. Through a series of poems, Cosner opens up and shares her experience. Each poem is a snapshot of her odyssey. What does it mean to be a survivor, these poems ask. What does it mean to be a warrior?

From diagnosis and surgery to chemotherapy and radiation to what is now her new normal, Cosner asks all her readers—patients, family members, friends, doctors, nurses—to join her in a raw and very real dance with cancer.

My head high, I shout,

I'm alive. My shoes start

to dance again to the rhythm of life.

Come dance with me.

Praise for Dancing with Breast Cancer

Every woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer will relate to the emotions, the drudgery, and the multiple steps they take while "dancing" with cancer. As a medical oncologist, I have treated many women with breast cancer. However, I never knew how they really felt till I read Janay's poems. They speak to me of the patients' pain, loss, fear, and daily struggles as well the hope of a future when they will be able to dance again with their partners and not with cancer. Ms. Cosner bares her soul so that we (the healthcare providers) can be better prepared to care for the "person" and not just the "cancer."

—Khalid Rehman, MD, FACP, medical oncologist and assistant professor of medicine at The New York Medical College

What’s most impressive about Janay Cosner's Dancing with Breast Cancer is her gutsy willingness to relive her ordeal from the first suspicious mammogram, through the traumas of treatment, to a wary recovery. Cosner has chosen poetry as the medium for her memoir, a choice that allows her to move swiftly yet with detail through the shifting phases of her illness, and all the accompanying emotions from horror and terror to humor and hope. Cosner is no sit-back survivor. She’s a savvy, sexy lady doing a defiant dance—a dance many women will recognize—a dance that will be eye-opening for everyone else.

—Joan Murray, author of Swimming for the Ark

Can there be beauty in pain? Only if it is poetry, and only when the poet touches your aching heart. Janay, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer, yearns to be treated like a person. She exposes her fears, frustration, and fighting spirit as she dances with fate. With a poem for each stage of her journey, she dances to a new tune, culminating in a symphony of shock, agony, anger, resolve, and regrets. Her poems are a window into a woman’s heart, her suffering, and her remarkable poise under duress. This book is for women with breast cancer, for Janay knows just how they feel; it is for all women, with or without cancer, for she reveals what it is like to suffer; and it is a book for caregivers, for it shows the pathway to treating a patient as a person and not just a case study. This is a book of hope.

—Sabeeha Rehman, author of Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim

Janay Cosner is a fun-loving poet. She is also a former English teacher and the author of eight Formula Writing curriculum guides for grades K–12.

Even though breast cancer ran in her family, she was shocked and overwhelmed when she was diagnosed with stage 2A. She was always the first one on the dance floor until her dance partner became cancer. Her cancer dance spun her in circles, and she became weak. Her only dance then was a dance with words—poetry.

Writing poems helped her vent and get through doctors’ appointments, surgeries, night blues, and long days. Each poem is a snapshot of her journey.

She now rocks a new, beautiful dance of life with her husband in Florida and New York.

Janay would love to hear your story, and she is available for speaking engagements. Please contact her at DancingwithBreastCancer2014@gmail.com.