Dr. Anne Katz

For more than ten years I’ve been looking for a book on sex for women
who have cancer, and for ten years I’ve mostly drawn blanks. So it was
with trepidation that I started to read Anne Katz’ latest effort
“Women, Cancer, Sex.”

Given all that I’ve read on the subject and how disappointed I’ve
been, I felt a reality check was in order after I finished the book.
So I quietly handed “Women, Cancer, Sex” to my wife. She’s an attorney
and will usually tell me within the first fifteen minutes “Really
boring!” or “It should have been a 5-page article and not a book.” So
I was particularly surprised when she called me immediately after she
finished this 184-page book and said “This is incredible! Best book
you’ve had me read in a long, long time. I hope you will strongly
recommend this to women AND to their partners.”

Some of the things we both liked about the Katz book is that it is
interesting, it flows well and it presents a great deal of information
without overwhelming you. You feel a part of what’s going on and the
author helps you understand the various issues and how to cope with
them. From offering help in how you might talk to people about your
cancer to when you might tell a new partner about your situation–this
book is invaluable. And good luck finding another resource that so
clearly helps a sexual partner to understand the emotional scars that
the various treatments can leave behind.

This is the perfect book for healthcare providers as well. I can’t
strongly enough recommend that you keep the book in an obvious place.
Even if a patient never talks to you about sex, seeing the book in
your office will give them permission to go home and order it from
Amazon.

The only criticism that both my wife and I had about the book was the
way the publisher did the “Dr. Katz Explains” text boxes. However, the
book’s many strengths more than overbalance this annoyance. If books
were to get grades, this one would earn an A or an A+, and I’m not an
easy grader.

Paul Joannides, Psy.D.
author: “Guide To Getting It On”
winner AASECT Book Award for 2009

Wednesday evening I will launch my book – Woman Cancer Sex.

The launch is being held at my local bookstore, a place where I hang out on cold winter weekend afternoons, perusing travel and cooking books. Everytime I have walked in to the store, I have dreamed of one day doing a book launch there. And tomorrow night I will do just that. It’s a strange thing about dreams – when they come true it still seems like a dream.

Wow.

A friend (a poet and director of a writer’s festival) is helping me by being by my side and starting off the Q & A. My whole family will be there and I am hoping that friends and colleagues will be there too. I am also praying that I won’t cry or do a Sally Field imitation – I am reminding myself that this is not an awards ceremony but rather an opportunity to share my dream with an audience. Sound like an award ceremony???

And this is not the end of it either. At the end of May I will travel to New York to launch the book at the NY Book Expo….. this is so beyond anything that I have ever dreamed about that I am already pinching myself! And there is more to come, I just know it in my heart.

Yesterday evening my daughter came to visit. She noticed something in the mailbox beside the front door and handed a brown padded envelope to me. I knew from the sender that it was a copy of Woman Cancer Sex and I rushed into the kitchen to find a pair of scissors to open the package.

The feelings that came over me as I held the book in my hands is something that I don’t really have words for. Like fast forwarding through a DVD, a rush of images buzzed through my head: the joy I felt when I knew that someone was going to publish this, the hours of writing in the dark of morning, pressing ’send” when I submitted the completed manuscript, thinking about and then picking the cover… and now I hold that in my hands. All those hours of work distilled into this slim book. What I feel now is joy and gratitude and hope and fullfillment.

I hope that if you are reading this, you will buy a copy ($14.95 through Amazon.com or at a bookstore near you!), read it and then let me know what you think. But mostly I hope that this helps even one more but hopefully many more.

It’s been four months since I made the first (and last) post to this blog. The time between has been busy with all sorts of things, not the least of which was going over the whole book again in painstaking detail, checking for errors. This was done on the page proofs sent to me by the publisher and it’s really exciting to see the words laid out on the page. Then I was asked for ideas for the cover, always very exciting, and this week I got to choose one of four cover samples. It took me just 10 seconds or so. I really think that the cover of a book should hit you somewhere between your eyes and your gut, probably at the base of the throat. And that’s exactly what happened. I saw one of the sample covers and that was it!
They tell me that the book will be in my hands in mid-April – that’s just two months away. I have some activities planned around this and am so looking forward to sharing this work and these words with my colleagues, friends and family. But mostly I want to share them with women where ever they are. You know that catch at the base of the throat I just talked about? Just thinking about this book in the hands of women gets me right there. Just two more months…

Welcome to the very first blog posting of this website. As a sexuality counselor for women (and men) with cancer, I have heard hundreds of stories about women and cancer and sex. Some of these stories had happy endings, some of them had sad endings and all of them described a journey of suffering, lack of information, confusion and pain.

This bothered me a lot. The women who find their way to me are the lucky ones. I have the time to listen and to make suggestions that often help. And if at first things don’t work out, then we keep trying. But there are thousands of women out there who don’t have access to a sexuality counselor and who may have tried to get answers to their questions but were not able to.

So I wrote a book to help health care providers learn about the sexual side effects of cancer. This book is called Breaking the Silence on Cancer and Sexuality. It has been very well received and even won an Apex Award for Excellence in Publishing. I learned from some of the professionals who have purchased the book that they recommend it for patients. And this got me thinking… and planning … and so I wrote a book just for women with cancer.

This book is called WomanCancerSex and it will be released in the spring of 2009. I am so excited about this and I know that it will be helpful to the many women who do not have access to professional help or who just want to try and fix things by themselves.

This blog is a companion to the book and on these pages you will find information about where the book can be purchased, as well as helpful hints and suggestions for those of you who are learnig to live the new normal of life and love after cancer.

Stay tuned…..