IN DANGER

One woman's powerful story of how her mother's death saved her life.

When Josie was 21, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Ten years later her mother was dead. Four years after Josie's mother's death, the disease reared up in Josie's own cells; this time more aggressively. She was 35, and her high-needs baby son was not yet one. As the daughter of a woman who had sought out alternatives to conventional medicine, Josie used her own knowledge and her mother's experience to find solutions for herself. Later she also used this experience to help her son rise up out of his profoundly autistic state.

In Danger is Josie's journey through life with breast cancer from inside the experience, capturing her energy and force-of-nature personality. She reflects on the literary works that inspired her, from cancer literature to other medical memoirs, works that helped her to explore disease and the human condition, and shed light into its darker aspects.

At its heart, this moving memoir delves deep into how it feels when everything you love is in danger.

Josie is a cancer patient advocate with CanSpeak Qld. She sits on the Community Board Advisory Group to the Metro North Hospital and Health Service that oversee six hospitals in Queensland. Josie currently works as a research assistant for Griffith University Menzies Health Institute's Women's Wellness After Cancer Program (WWACP). Her former job was for UQ's School of Medicine, Psychiatry faculty implementing a quality improvement project to improve the discharge planning process in psychiatric inpatient units in Logan and PAH hospitals.