There's something so raw and intimate about Kim Allison's cancer memoir, Red Sunshine, that as a reader at times you feel like you might be invading her privacy. But as the Stanford cancer pathologist told me in our 1:2:1 conversation, she mulled over what if anything might be too personal to share and decided that if she was going to write a book about her battle with Stage 3 breast cancer she would do it with candor.
I was curious. How does a cancer pathologist who peers through a microscope every day to analyze biopsies of strangers look at her own malignant cells? What's it like to have the dual role of patient and cancer doctor? And, how does a mother of two young children even contemplate the question of death?
In person, Allison is as disarming and comfortable talking about her cancer as she is detailing it in the book. Now, five years cancer-free, she can look back and call herself a survivor. Her kids, nine and six, still too young to fully comprehend their mother's journey from desperation to renewal, see the history of her illness through the scars on her body. The cancer may be gone now, but for Allison it's certainly not forgotten.
I'm sure that her story will give hope and perhaps even solace to other women (and men too) looking down at the beast of cancer. Red Sunshine is a tale about weathering a storm, surviving the dark times and in the end coming out whole.
