Feeling My Way Through Cancer begins with a routine mammogram that Jane S. Bradford expected to be ordinary. It was not. A suspicious spot led quickly to more testing, and almost overnight her calendar filled with doctors, scans, procedures, treatment plans, and unfamiliar medical language.

Bradford did what came naturally to her: she wrote.

The poems in this collection were shaped during the experience itself, not after the fear had faded. They capture the days when chemotherapy left her exhausted, food tasted wrong, neuropathy disturbed her sleep, and hair loss changed the face she saw in the mirror. They also record the tension of waiting for surgery, the relief of good pathology results, the physical strain of recovery, radiation, reconstruction, and the difficult adjustment to a body that no longer felt entirely familiar.

For readers looking for breast cancer books, books for breast cancer patients, or cancer survivor books, this is not a neatly packaged story of courage. Bradford writes about crying, impatience, isolation, embarrassment, faith, anger, gratitude, family, and the need to understand what doctors were asking her body to endure.

Her poems trace the emotional impact of breast cancer as closely as the medical treatment itself. They also explore breast cancer anxiety, fear after cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy experience, and the uneasy reality of loneliness and breast cancer.

At its heart, Feeling My Way Through Cancer is Jane Bradford trying to make sense of what was happening while it was still happening, one poem at a time.