Product Details
Paperback
96 pages
Verve Editions
Published 2001
From Publishers Weekly
This empowering book presents photos of 21 women of all ages who have had breast reconstruction after surgery from breast cancer. In her introduction, plastic surgeon Eskenazi says, "This book is about much more than breast cancer. It is about renewal, resilience, and regeneration. It is also about reality, not the way we want life to be." From there, Lorant's black-and-white photos offer a glimpse into the wonder of breast reconstruction. Kara, shown bare with her husband and in a wedding veil, explains that she had bilateral prophylactic surgery with immediate reconstruction. Upon being told by the doctor that she possessed a gene that would almost guarantee that she'd get breast cancer, she remembers thinking "every single woman on my mother's side of the family had breast cancer.... Then and there, I wanted both breasts off." The women in the photos are courageous, and exhibit a beauty in their pride. An afterword explains and gives clinical examples of the breast reconstruction process.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Terry Lorant is a photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Loren Eskenazi is a nationally known plastic surgeon and an artist who lives in Sausalito, California.
Book Description
Each woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer is faced with her worst fears and a sense of hopelessness that pervades her every waking moment. Often, her anguish comes from the belief that she will no longer be attractive, or look or feel normal again. This brave and honest, groundbreaking book offers an answer to the confusion that arises from this diagnosis.
An astonishingly beautiful, life-affirming and hopeful book, Reconstructing Aphrodite tells the stories of twenty-one women -- all of whom, facing breast cancer and mastectomy, chose simultaneous reconstruction. Through intimate first-person narrative, wedded to startlingly frank and revealing photographs, the women exude courage and confidence in the face of life-threatening disease. The stories these women tell will serve as the inspiration and solace for countless others whose lives are touched by this tragic illness.
In her moving photographs, Terry Lorant has captured the spirit of beauty and wholeness each of these women possesses. Working in concert with Dr. Loren Eskenazi, one of the foremost breast reconstruction surgeons, Reconstructing Aphrodite is a unique combination of photographic and surgical artistry and the courageous stories of women whose lives have been transformed.
The book was born out of the realization that combining reconstruction with the tragedy of mastectomy would all but eliminate the psychological trauma of breast cancer surgery. Dr. Eskenazi and her surgical partner and team have perfected the surgical techniques for these parallel operations.
Reconstructing Aphrodite also contains detailed information about breast reconstruction, and resources to guide you, your mother, sister, wife or friend through the maze of medical decisions that must be made if one's life has been touched by breast cancer.
The women portrayed in Reconstructing Aphrodite have offered their most intimate stories as a gift so that no woman will ever have to face this illness alone. |
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