"I thought I had a contract with cancer: I live a healthy lifestyle and cancer stays away from me. But I forgot to get cancer to sign the contract and bladder cancer came for me with a mission to kill me within 12 months. This is my harrowing story of how fierce self advocacy and gratitude saved my life." - Author Margo Wickersham If you or someone you care about is facing cancer, this book inspires hope, even in the darkest storms.When you get a cancer diagnosis, you feel like you’ve been thrust into the center of a fierce storm. Your emotions run a wild gamut and it can feel overwhelming. Everyone tells you to focus on gratitude, but how can you do that when you’ve just learned you have to fight for your life? This is the heart-hitting unfolding of author Margo Wickersham’s not-so-excellent adventure through cancer, chemo, and chaos, and how she endured a year that left her body and her world changed forever. With wit, humility, emotion, and raw honesty, Margo shares how to grasp any amount of gratitude and use it to survive whatever life hurls at you. You don’t have to feel strong or brave or grateful; you just have to hang on. Not dying in this moment is enough to keep fighting. There’s no guarantee that life won’t dish out unrelenting blows in quick succession. Author Margo Wickersham’s life-threatening cancer diagnosis and treatment, her aging mother’s rapid decline, several back-to-back losses, and the turbulent ups and downs of a demanding job left her dangerously close to empty—all during an unprecedented year. What do you do when life pulls you in all directions at once? Somehow, some way, you muster the resolve to keep moving forward, one tiny, granular step at a time. No super hero cape required. "It has been my pleasure to guide you through this journey to beat your cancer. Your indomitable spirit, courage in the face of adversity and determination to the "best patient you have ever had" were evident early on. And even when you were firtghtened, you stayed strong, brave and maintained a positive outlook. And that, is half the battle right there! Congratulations!" Ashish M. Kamat, MD, MBBS is an Endowed Professor of Urologic Oncology (Surgery) and Cancer Research at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center "This is a book about victory...about understanding yourself better in spite of difficulties...maybe even because of them. You won't be disappointed as you read it. It is at times funny, profoundly sad (I had tears in my eyes and down my face many many times), at times jarring (how many things can seemingly go against the same person?), but always engaging and thought provoking. Always encouraging." Thad Puckett "Margo Wickersham writes of the importance of loving family and friends' support, self compassion which she discovered in this trying year, as well as a new appreciation of gratitude for all she had been given. It is a detailed and fascinating story of a contemporary woman's determination to save her life with grace and wit and difficult soul searching, despite the monumental odds against her. You cannot put the book down. You will be moved and elated as you step into her shoes. What a gift she has given us! Lola Jennings