Bald Is Better with Earrings: A Survivor's Guide to Getting Through Breast Cancer

Andrea Hutton

Harper Wave, 2015

Agent: Sandra Dijkstra

The breast cancer guide every woman needs for herself, her best friend, and her sister—a warm, practical, relatable handbook, that dispels the terror, taking you step-by-step through the process, from diagnosis to post-treatment.

When Andrea Hutton was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wanted to know everything. She voraciously read books, articles, and websites and talked to everyone she knew. But nothing prepared her for what the surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation would feel like. Were there tricks that could ease her pain and discomfort? What was “fatigue” and how would it affect her? At what exact moment would her hair fall out and how? Hutton wanted what she could not find: a clear how-to guide for the cancer girl she had become.

Bald Is Better with Earrings is Hutton’s answer for women diagnosed with breast cancer: a straightforward handbook, leavened with humor and inspiration, to shepherd them though the experience. Warm and down-to-earth, Hutton explains what to expect and walks you through this intense and emotional process: tests, surgery, chemo, losing your hair and shaving your head, being bald, radiation treatments.

Hutton offers a wealth of invaluable advice—from tricks for surviving chemo, to treating your skin during radiation, to keeping track of meds—and includes a practical list of tips for each stage of the process at the end of every chapter. Compassionate, friendly, and shaped by Hutton’s first-hand knowledge, Bald Is Better with Earrings is the comprehensive, essential companion for anyone dealing with breast cancer.

Reviews:
“Well written gem of a guide. Ms. Hutton’s book boils the self-help breast cancer survivorship genre into an accessible and useful guide for the terrified women and their loved ones facing a diagnosis of breast cancer.”
The Asco Post
 
 
Bald Is Better With Earrings is exactly what its subtitle promises: a survivor’s guide to getting through breast cancer. In a chatty, girlfriend kind of way, Hutton unflinchingly describes what it’s like to go through diagnosis, mastectomy, scars, questions of breast reconstruction, prosthesis fitting, chemotherapy, head-shaving, radiation, wigs, the rest of life. Building on that experience, she offers advice to other patients.
Washington Post
 

“Breast cancer survivor Hutton offers a wealth of insider knowledge on exactly what to expect of the 'emotional and physical roller coaster' involved in battling the disease. Hutton offers both serious and lighthearted suggestions…. While there is no universal cancer experience, Hutton covers the most likely scenarios in detailed fashion with grace, empathy, and humor.”
Publishers Weekly