Surely time should stop, suspended by the tragedy of a serious disease? Surely life should become embalmed, preserved from the buffets of minutiae. Surely one should be exempt from laundry.

When Sandy Glum, a high school teacher, was first diagnosed with rectal cancer she chose to record the ups and downs of her post-diagnosis life in a series of blog postings. Most of us would choose to keep the challenges of cancer—the ruthless toll it all takes on the body, family, and life—and the thoughts they provoke, for private reflection and introspection. Sandy chose to share so that we could better understand the world and life of someone with cancer.

“Life is pain, Highness,” said Wesley Buttercup in The Princess Bride, and it is with these words that Sandy summed up her fears and diminishing hope. Fearful of being a “whiner,” and aware of the need to be strong and courageous for her young family, Sandy muses on what she sees as her multiple failed attempts to live up to her self-imposed expectations of bravery. Her self-deprecating accounts overflow with endearing and captivating honesty during what is unarguably one of the most vulnerable times of her life. Tongue-in-cheek, she pores over the bizarre rites of the cancer patient—from PICC lines to hair loss—the distressing changes in relationships, the confounding wrestle with mortality, and the significance of faith in the light of it all.

This book offers a selection of entries from her blog Damned Near Killed Him. The entries were compiled by her friend, Sandy Oshiro Rosen (author of Bare—The Misplaced Art of Grieving and Dancing), who also contributed the Foreword and Afterword.

It offers an honest, unembellished insight into the private life of Sandy Glum as she bares herself—body and soul—to deliver a touching and inspiring narrative.