A Breast Cancer Survivor’s Account of Survival

 Review by Ronica Wahi

 

And Beneath It All Was Love: My Path Back Home Again Through Breast Cancer

By Aime Alley Card

First published: February 3, 2016, Aime a Card.

Pages: 274.

ISBN: 9780692592465

“I am concerned that I was one of those people who appeared on the outside to sail through it. I want to be clear. No one who goes through chemotherapy sails through it. It’s brutal.”

Through the above lines, Aime Alley Card, in the “Prologue” to her memoir And Beneath It All Was Love, makes an honest confession of how her experience of cancer treatment was. The entire memoir tells of her journey of fighting cancer – she doesn’t shy away from displaying her vulnerability and mental turmoil, and from talking about her fears and pain felt at different stages of the said journey.

The memoir starts from just before she is diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, a little over a year after her mother succumbed to brain cancer. The pain of and the fears arising from this terrible loss, and the fact of her family being far away made the situation all the more challenging. Aged merely 41 and with a quickly growing type of cancer, she had to undergo aggressive treatment.

Card shares about how her treatment went but this is not the sole engagement of her work. She also focusses on the other things happening around her that added positivity. This includes her attempts at calming herself, some endearing moments with her kids, the support and the helping hand extended by her family as well as by others around her, random acts of kindness, exchanged emails and messages, and sweet gestures by friends and family – such as her brother and his wife sending to her some things that had belonged to her mother.

With space and credit given to the positivity around her, the narrative is certainly not a grim one. Card keeps fighting bravely as newer obstacles come up on her path to recovery, while life goes on. There are household responsibilities to be thought of, work to be delegated, kids’ education to be involved in – particularly with the “frantic rat race” of Silicon Valley that doesn’t even spare school-going kids, and so on. Therefore, it’s the whole picture of that time period in Card’s life.

Because Card decided to share how things were and how she felt, this memoir can give heart to those who are currently trying their best to defeat cancer. Even for those who haven’t been ever diagnosed with cancer, this can be a valuable read for it’s a tale of survival and equally, a tale of love of family and friends.

And Beneath It All Was Love is written in everyday language, suitable in view of the subject matter. It is easy and quick to go through, and it’s also written in a good style. The reader gets engaged enough to want to know what happened next. The book is emotional, but happily, not melodramatic. The scenes of panic and pain are realistically drawn. And so, overall, the book leaves a fine impression.

For those who will be interested in reading on such a topic, this book is going to prove a good resource.

 

Amazon India link for And Beneath It All Was Love (Paperback, Import): https://amzn.to/3irEgMF

Amazon India link for And Beneath It All Was Love (Kindle): https://amzn.to/3CYCpGI

 

To know more about Aime Card’s cancer treatment, important things she learnt about breast cancer, and the changes going through the cancer ordeal brought into her life, do watch her interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obk3iEph4qE

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