Diagnosed at the young age of 38 with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, Dorothy A. Geary was shocked to learn that the five-year survival rate for her type of cancer at the time was zero percent. Initially given no hope, Dottie, who still had young children at home, was thrown into the underworld of the worst breast cancer nightmare. After extensive experimental treatments, there are now no visible signs of cancer—eight years after her original diagnosis. Her story of survival is the best translation of   H O P E  any woman might find.

Convinced that more could be done to offer comfort and hope to other women with breast cancer, Dorothy set about to fill a gap on the resource book shelves. After surveying the books available, she found there were "large medical books that husbands and dads do not read, and children couldn't understand. There are women to women books... showing actual photographs of naked women with mastectomy scars and reconstruction...that couldn't be shared with anyone but my husband (and he only looked once)." What was 'out there' seemed either too simple, too dismal or too cerebral.

In trying to reach out to the younger women of child-bearing age being diagnosed with more aggressive cancers—the average age of aggressive cancer is 35—Dorothy has touched women of all ages with her insights, art, compassion and gentle humor. The content of this book is not heavy or academic. It addresses the very palpable issues and feelings each person experiences with the diagnosis, treatment and healing of breast cancer. The simple sketches reach to the heart of our most basic fears, aloneness, and colliding feelings, as we deal with the emotional, physical, spiritual and familial implications of what is happening to our bodies, when they are assaulted by cancer.

This book, placed on the table among others will be the first book patients choose. It reads quickly in a hospital or waiting room. Even though it talks openly about cancer, no one will be embarrassed to leave it on the coffee table in their living room. It's cute and written simply enough that even small children can understand. You'll laugh, and cry, and laugh again as Dorothy uses her experiences to help you through your journey.

Before You, There Was Me... is a precious resource for any woman or family experiencing breast cancer. A merciful and hopeful gift from another survivor! Every physician who must share the diagnosis, every center that provides treatment, every health professional who offers services, every caretaker or loved one who wants to support a woman with breast cancer all the way to wellness, should have this gem of a book within arm's reach.

It literally took my breath away the first time I read it. Health care professionals are also using this book. It has brought surgeons to tears, as well as most folks who read it. As for me, I can honestly say the only words that have affected me more than this book, are found in the Bible.

Dorothy A. Geary grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts just outside Boston, she has wonderful childhood memories of fishing and boating trips her family, including her parents, two older brothers and one younger sister, took around Boston Harbor.

By nine years of age, she began creating her own patterns for clothes, by eleven, she was drawing and writing stories. As a young girl, she received awards in art, sewing and composition. Although she continued these hobbies throughout adult life, she never would have anticipated how her skills would be tapped in her celebration of survival as a cancer patient and in her passionate outreach to women and children whose lives have been forever changed by the experience of cancer.

With an extremely poor prognosis at only 38 years of age, she was told she would not survive until the Spring of that year. Determined to stand by her family and cling to her own life, she read countless books about the disease and visited the major cancer hospitals in the Boston area. In that search she found a team of doctors who said they could offer hope through experimental drugs, even though she knew that historically her type of aggressive cancer was fatal.

For many months Dorothy endured high doses of chemotherapy, underwent surgery, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant. She was also held in isolation for 100 days due to extremely low blood counts. During that time she could do nothing more than pray and sleep. One year after diagnosis, she completed all treatments and had an opportunity to put her feet back on life's road, while she waited to see if it had all worked.

Her own self-propelled therapy included creating handmade quilts for family in case she did not survive. She created scrap books, wrote letters and made herself available to a 24-hour hotline for women who were just being diagnosed to help them through those first few months. After six months Dorothy began making chemo buddy dolls for children from her leftover scraps of material. After her own hospital check-ups, she would visit the pediatric ward to give away her dolls to remind the children that they were cute, loveable, and very huggable. Being sick and sometimes bald didn't matter to her or anyone who loved them! (She continues these visits today and has given away more than 1,000 chemo buddies.)

Dorothy also worked with Hospice. "While helping people die, I was also helping myself to live." Dorothy recognized that while she did many positive things to reach out to others and to maintain optimism for her family, there were still negative feelings inside her, feelings that needed not to be hushed, but to be dealt with. Her delightful book addresses just those kinds of "don't-talk-about-it" feelings that matter very much to a woman struggling to survive, heal, and even thrive after breast cancer.

Dorothy Geary was only the eighth woman to receive the new treatment for IBC at Massachusetts General Hospital. Now, eight years after diagnosis, she is a remarkable survivor. She is a woman who has been able to see her children graduate and move on to higher education. While she still experiences chronic fatigue left over from treatments, she works very hard to maintain an active life—staying in touch with computer technology, walking, writing, sewing, volunteering, reaching out to other families, loving her husband and children, and cherishing life as the gift it is.

Dorothy Geary's book Before You, There Was Me... now available through Acorn Publishing.