An Exercise in Uncertainty by Jonathan Gluck

Description

In this thought-provoking memoir, an award-winning journalist explores the chaos, doubt, and search for meaning that come with staying one step ahead of cancer for decades. Gluck isnt just something of a medical miracle. Hes also part of a growing population. Thanks to revolutionary medical advances, many cancers and other serious illnesses are no longer death sentences, but chronic diseases people can often live with for years. While doctors continue to look for magic bullet cures, they can now extend patients lives by slowing the progression of their diseases one treatment at a time. The result is a strange, new no-mans-land between being sick and being well where Gluck and millions of others reside.In An Exercise in Uncertainty, Gluck maps this previously uncharted territory. Among the many vexing side effects of chronic illness he explores is uncertaintynever knowing from one day to the next how ones illness might change them physically, emotionally, spiritually. When you have an incurable disease, how do you cope with knowing that even when youre in remission, it will eventually return? How do you live with the anxiety, the fear, the near-constant awareness of your mortality? For Gluck, one surprising answer is fly-fishing. If youre looking for peace in your own sea of uncertainty, it might be something else. Hardcover. 5.75×8.55 inches, 304 pgs.