In those first months, I talked to nurses and doctors, schedulers and survivors, but what I didn’t hear was anything particularly helpful regarding the day-to-day stuff. I wanted to hear—or to read—what was really going to happen. What will it feel like to get a needle stuck in my armpit? What will I say to my kids when they ask what happened to my hair? What could I eat? What would chemo feel like? What would radiation do to my skin? What would I look like without breasts? I love nothing more than a plan and a list and neither was in sight.

I remember so clearly sitting on an exam room table speaking to a radiation oncologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston—we were there getting a second opinion—and she looked at me and said: “This fucking sucks. It’s ok to cry and say it. Forget the pink warriors. You have cancer and it sucks.”

And that was what I craved—to hear someone say something honest about what was happening. I felt so alone, and so isolated, and the only thing I wanted was answers. Books had come to my aid during pregnancy, before job interviews, when I needed to learn a language; my whole life I turned to books for answers. Why not this? The best I could find during the initial steps of my road trip were somber hospital brochures titled “Coping with Cancer,” filled with photos of half-smiling patients and their caregivers drinking tea.

I needed something else, something honest and at times funny; something real and usable but also a companion, a friendly voice in your ear on a bad day; something that points out the absurdity of your “new normal;” something that addresses the grim specifics that everyone else seems to gloss over; something to flip through when you’re wondering “what to expect” from doctors, family, friends.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I pictured the Hollywood version of my sick self: a scarf on my head, a blanket on my lap, and an IV in my arm with one doctor and a few nurses hovering and a family that supported and cheered me up. Basically me, but bald and slightly nauseous.

It’s not like that.

It’s a team of doctors, endless nurses, endless scans and blood draws and procedures and confusion and frustration and exhaustion. And that’s just the first month.

Now I know that life will never be the same again after a cancer diagnosis. I know you will wish, hope it, pray for things to reset and go back to “normal,” but they won’t. I know now that cancer changes everything.

Oh, how I wish someone had told me that on day one. How I wish someone had given me a book that said it all, in honest/grave/mordantly funny language, and saved me a lot of time and whiplash.

I wish someone had written this book.

My family and I had to educate ourselves while fighting for my life. I didn’t have the time or energy for support groups (many of us don’t); the research my family and friends did, together with real intel, bits of advice, and vignettes from young survivors, is what This is Cancer is about.

This is everything I have to share on the subject; what I heard and liked, what got me through the appointments, the assaults on my body, and the general shittiness that is being a cancer patient. I want to help you get through this, the most surreal, infuriating journey you’ll ever be on. And honestly, I