Double Vision: An East-West Collaboration for Coping With Cancer

When Alexandra Todd's twenty-one-year-old son is diagnosed with cancer, the family embarks on an odyssey that ultimately steers an expansive course between the gleaming technologies of traditional Western medicine and the gentle arts of alternative healing. That the voyage is successful is testimony not only to the strength of Drew's courage, but also to his mother's determination to combine the best of Western medical techniques with Eastern treatment strategies in their battle against life threatening illness. Double Vision is a unique combination of memoir and rigorous scholarship. Todd, a medical sociologist who has written extensively about health care delivery, describes Drew's compelling struggle in strong personal language. At the same time, she also reflects on larger issues of U.S. health care such as social class and accessibility to treatment, conventional medicine's often intractable power structure, and the effects of globalization on medical knowledge. Invaluable appendices offer practical information on macrobiotic foods and recipes, cookbooks, mail order companies, organizations for nutritional education and referrals, selected readings on mind/body connections and Chinese and holistic medicine, and addresses of stress reduction and Chinese/holistic medicine centers.