NOT THE LAST GOODBYE

On Life, Death, Healing and Cancer

by Dr DAVID SERVAN-SCHREIBER

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New small softcover book, 138 pages, published 2011.

I knew the prognosis.  Sooner or later, it would come back.  I could slow down the inevitable; I could gain a few years.  But there was nothing I could do to make this cancer disappear forever.  So this was it.  This was the relapse.  The Big One.

Nineteen years after his original diagnosis, David Servan-Schreiber submits to an emergency MRI that confirms his greatest fear: his brain cancer has returned.  Here, he shares his coming to terms with the news and, with courage and candor, examines his life from the point of view of one who understands that his illness is terminal, yet nevertheless lives every day fully and with hope.

As the author of and spokesman for the Anticancer program, which has given hope to millions of readers around the world, Dr Servan-Schreiber frankly acknowledges the ways in which he departed from his own advice.  Reaffirming the principles of the program - from nutrition and exercise to rest and meditation - he also weaves in the stories of a number of clinical cases, and offers a rebalanced approach, emphasising certain elements that he himself tended to ignore.

The story he tells here raises many of the most complex and personal questions about how we choose to live and how we prepare for death, striking a delicate balance between the limits of medicine and the hope that sustains us as we confront them.  It is powerful, honest, and truly inspiring.

Dr Servan-Shreiber's bestselling book, Anticancer: A New Way of Life, is also available - click here for more information

About the author

David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D. was a French-born psychiatrist, writer and neuroscientist. He was clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and co-founder of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.. He co-directed an NIH laboratory for the study of clinical cognitive neuroscience, published more than 90 articles in scientific journals and lectured at leading international academic centres, including Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, and Cambridge. His book Anticancer: a new way of life became an international bestseller, and was translated into more than 40 languages. His earlier book The Instinct to Heal sold 1.3 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 28 languages.

One of the original seven members of the US board of Doctors Without Borders, he helped provide medical and psychiatric relief in Kurdistan, Guatemala, India (Tibetan refugees), Tajikistan and Kosovo, and continues to develop mental health interventions for victims of crises, while also training therapists in crisis areas. He was the son of the late Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, famous French journalist, politician and former editor of L'Express, author of The American Challenge. Following a year-long battle with a relapse of brain cancer, Dr Servan-Schreiber died in July 2011.

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Not the Last Goodbye: On Life, Death, Healing and Cancer - Dr David Servan-Schreiber