Memoir: Surviving the Cure

Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard

(*relatively speaking)

Cover

The Journey of the Book

I began a new life, and lost an old one, on June 7, 2007, when a doctor dropped an oncological bombshell on me—leukemia. Throughout various stages of my treatment and recovery, I thought I should write a book about my experience, but new setbacks and challenges kept changing the story of the book. Now, nearly ten years later, that book is almost here! 

What Is It About?

I thought I knew cancer. After all, I’d lived it. And when I went into remission, I thought I was in the clear. It wouldn’t be long before I could get back to a normal life and rejoin my friends.

However, I soon learned cancer was only the beginning. Not long after I returned home, my lungs started failing. The cure was killing me.

Extreme treatments prevented an all-but-certain death, but at great cost: 100 pounds of weight gain, emotional and mental trauma, and a bone disease for which joint replacements were the only fix.

Though I was in physical and mental agony after my release from the hospital, I decided to try to piece together a life worth living. One where I could be happy, could joke about my condition, could have the best parking spots. Maybe even one day hold the supremely enviable world record for most joints replaced.

But none of that could happen until I picked myself up. The only question was: could I?

Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard is the humorously frank story of life after cancer and the challenges that face nearly every survivor, all rolled into one battered individual.

Advanced Praise

"Andrew Bundy's captivating memoir has an unexpected focus seldom explored in the story of cancer: survivorship. 

Complications that follow a bone marrow transplant can be brutal. Andrew invites us into the intimate, deeply private struggle of coming to terms with life after cancer - a time rife with frustration for a young man hungry for independence that feels out of reach. His devoted family provides the constant support he requires, but his life does not return to "normal" as quickly as he might have hoped. 

With humor and candor Andrew sends a powerful message about the significant medical and emotional issues that shape life after treatment and illuminates the critical need for programs that support young cancer survivors.

I first met Andrew when he was 18 years old and we decided to proceed with bone marrow transplant treatment. As his physician, I was deeply moved reading the entirety of his experience from this intimate perspective and am inspired by his resilient spirit."

Anna Pawlowska, MD
Director, Pediatric Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Program
City of Hope

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"Andrew Bundy’s memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard, shares an important story for the childhood cancer community. While great progress has been made through more than 60 years of cancer research, much more needs to be done. For many children diagnosed with cancer, not only can the therapy carry significant and life-threatening side effects during treatment, the effects can extend years beyond completion of cancer therapy into survivorship. For some patients with leukemia who must undergo a stem cell transplant, the long-term effects can be especially severe. Among many messages contained in Andrew’s story, one is the clear need to develop more effective and less toxic treatment; patients deserve no less."

Peter C. Adamson, MD

Chair, Children’s Oncology Group

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia