'I had loved my breasts, the source once of sexual ecstasy as well as maternal bliss. Now they were my enemies.'
Janet Reibstein's mother and two aunts were diagnosed with breast cancer as young women. During the post-war years, breast cancer was considered an old woman's disease, with no choice of treatment, no specialist nursing, no counselling. And nobody realised it could be genetic. Neither public thinking nor the medical profession would change until the 1970s.
For the three sisters - such early victims - cancer became a lonely, shameful disease which had a profound effect on their personal lives and their families. By 1991 much had changed. Janet was married with two children. She and her female cousins knew the genetic link with breast cancer. They were all vigilant, they were all clear. Then her cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer. And Janet realised that she needed to make a decision . . .
'Staying Alive' is an intimate, unsentimental saga of these women, who lived under the shadow of breast cancer, and a deeply personal history of the disease in the last century, the slow development in its treatment, and the choices and hope that exist today. It is a truly extraordinary tale.
