I found this a very difficult read, because two of my friends are experiencing cancer at the moment, and it felt too much of a raw and painful book to take on at this time.

On the other hand, from the first few chapters I did try, the Author has given a brutally honest insight into the life of someone experiencing chemotherapy and everything that goes with it.

It’s a rare book that can wring both laughs and (mostly happy) tears out of a cancer ordeal. I read a lot of books about illness, death and dying – subjects I can appreciate aren’t for anyone.

It’s a rare book that can wring both laughs and (mostly happy) tears out of a cancer ordeal. I read a lot of books about illness, death and dying – subjects I can appreciate aren’t for anyone. Maybe you think it’d be too depressing to read a book whose author dies at the end. If that’s the case, let me heartily recommend this to you alongside A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles by Mary Elizabeth Williams. Both give a sort of Everywoman perspective on the cancer experience and rebuilding life on the other side.

Pawagi is a family court judge and mother of twin teenagers in Toronto. She was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2014, went through two intensive rounds of chemotherapy, and then had a stem cell transplant from a donor from the South Asian immigrant community six months later. This is a warts-and-all account of the treatment process – if it hurt, if she wept into her pillow at night, if she felt like crap, she says so. Though not entirely without self-pity, the book transforms such feelings through a wry, atheist’s “why not me?” approach:

“while I do not believe in God, I do believe in justice”

“I want to wake up and be a judge again, not an overgrown diapered baby.”

“Hell is other people…in the hospital bed next to yours.”

“my head wrapped in a bright silk scarf, my face round and puffy from the steroids. I am pitied, I am admired. I am doomed, I am destined. I am battered, I am beautiful. I am cursed, I am blessed. I hum with possibility, good and bad. I am assigned virtues, I am forgiven sins. … I can see people trying to work out if I am the luckiest or the unluckiest person they know.”

Her Caring Bridge website was where she let out her feelings and connected with loved ones, a sort of trial run for this book. In the lovely last chapter, she meets her donor, a young man in New York City, and his relatives, two years after her transplant and realizes that she’s unwittingly acquired not just a blood brother but a whole new extended family. They may be clichés but they’re completely true in this case: this is a heart-warming and life-affirming read, and with any luck will encourage more people to become blood and organ donors.

The title and cover of Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy caught my attention. The title is catchy and I wondered why does the cover have a popsicle? This is a candid memoir of Manjusha Pawagi. A Canadian judge who was born in India, she tells it like it is as she gives you her experience with leukemia. She leaves no tale untold, all the way down to the description of the ileostomy bags.

She is very detailed in her journey as she faces her many fears. My husband battled cancer as a teenager and this gives me an idea of what he went through. He fought a different cancer than Pawagi had, but it gives the reader an idea of the struggle all cancer patients go through. A cancer ward has to be a very difficult place to work and visit.

Pawagi is a minority of South Asian descent and you learn how hard it is to find a match for stem cells as according to the memoir ¾ of donors are Caucasian. She says that only 4% of donors are South Asian and most likely her donor would have to come from the Indian state of Maharashtra where she is from. Finding a donor is difficult in the first place and many people wait and unfortunately never find their match. Being a minority makes it more difficult. More people should sign up to be donors!

Pawagi also gives humor in this memoir. She talks about wanting a banana popsicle (so that’s where the cover comes in!) and still eating bacon. She feels that if she stops eating bacon, then cancer wins. We can’t let that happen, keep eating and enjoying bacon!

Please note that Pawagi’s journey is not a faith based journey. She is an atheist and this does not change. She is convinced that she will go to Heaven: ‘I’m an atheist too, but I’m firmly convinced that if I turn out to be wrong and there is a God, and all the accompanying heaven/hell thing, I am definitely going to heaven. I have no theological basis for this, but I know it would be ridiculously unfair if I were barred because of what I consider to be a mere technicality, which I equate to the minor procedural irregularities I see in court all the time, and which I either ignore or patch up after the fact in some way. Because, while I do not believe in God, I do believe in justice’ (Chapter Seven). As a believer myself, I can’t agree with her thoughts on this issue. But this is her memoir to tell as she sees fit and she is free to believe or not believe as she wishes.

Earlier in her book she talks about her son’s journal in school and that he took it seriously and wrote down everything he did. He wrote so much that the teacher set a three page a week limit on the journals and would stop reading at three pages no matter how much was written. She says: ‘I will try not to inflict so much on my own readers, but just like Jack’s teacher, you are free to stop reading at any point (Chapter Five). I like her and her attitude, though it is hard to say I ‘enjoyed’ her memoir as it is a about a battle with cancer.

Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy is recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and Second Story Press for granting me an e-arc copy!

No question this was a 5 star read for me! Manjusha Pawagi was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia in 2014. She was 47 years old, the mother of 11 year old twins, and a judge in the Ontario Court of Justice. Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy is the memoir of her two years following the diagnosis. It is honest, painful and funny. It's a loving tribute to her family, friends and caregivers. And it a avoids all of the potential pitfalls of such memoirs -- it isn't overly self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing, and it doesn't try to convey big life messages but does convey so much about real life. And it's so well written -- Pawagi moves so comfortably from anecdotes to feelings to reflections about the world to dream states, and she does so with a wry sense of humour and graceful confidence. Obviously, Pawagi could not have written this memoir if she hadn't survived. But also this is very much the upbeat memoir of someone celebrating survival. Highly recommended to anyone who likes personal memoirs. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. I do hope this one will be available to readers outside of Canada.

This was a book I could associate with having had cancer and all of the treatment that goes with it. People think that a cancer ward is a sad place but this often is not the case and us patients can laugh at ourselves, our hairloss, the constant peeing when the chemotherapy drug is entering our system and in some cases ( mine anyway) a tingly feeling down below which made me giggle loudly on the ward and lots of other things in which others will think quite bizarre.

This is a personal story which is very interesting as well as some fun too. The book made me cry in parts yet in others it was uplifting. The lady is one tough cookie and this book is one that really needs to be read by everyone so they to can get a true idea of cancer treatment.

This book has humour and a lightness in it for such a dark topic. I found it very easy to read and very quickly become absorbed in it. This is Manjusha's story of her cancer - Leukaemia. There is disbelief initially followed by a long process of treatment. This includes a full stem cell transplant which I found very interesting. The lack of donors on a worldwide basis apparently leads Manjusha to campaign for awareness. However the treatment is no panacea and there are real dangers involved.
There is enough medical information about both the treatment and the condition to satisfy those who are interested. However the key aspect of this book is how Manjusha felt about the impact and the things that happened to her both minor and major.
The story is told in a very matter of fact way. Manjusha manages to create the feeling of real surprise at times. She also comes over as a very real character. In the end this is an extremely personal story and it is hard to criticise the open honesty of her writing. It should be of interest to many people who have involvement with this type of cancer and its treatment

This was an inspiring, honest, funny and heartbreaking account of Manjusha Pawagi's journeyhrough chemotherapy. Manjusha has lived a previously happy and generally lucky life. Despite that she is a worrier, about pretty much everything. Then, with a shocking thump, she receives a diagnosis of leukaemia. She takes us on the journey with her, pulling no punches. You will root for her all the way, with laughs and tears.

An excellent book! I'd recommend this to anybody, no matter whether or not they've had their lives touched by cancer.

It's a very poignant and real book. Manjusha allows the reader an insight into an experience they will hopefully never have to go through themselves, and while Manjusha is undoubtedly one of the lucky ones (she survived!) it still served as a chilling reminder of how cancer effects not just the patient, but everybody around.

I find it wrong to say that I "liked" the book, but I had a very hard time putting it down, and it is one of those powerful books that stay with you for a long time after finishing it.

One of my former friends from childhood passed last month after battling leukemia. Her fight -- updated often on Facebook -- propelled me to request this memoir on NetGalley. It is a truly lovely, motivational, honest read. I appreciated the author's candor in the face of awful pain, worrisome odds, and sometimes even the inability to move her body. It provided an insider's look into a scary cancer fight that ended in her favor. All the best to you, Manjusha! Thanks for sharing your story.

This was a sad but funny book on cancer. I read it with a smile but also the under tones as to what cancer is and how it effects you is still there, with people around me suffering from cancer this was a refreshing book on the topic and one I would recommend if you want a different more fun take on it.

Thank you to Netgalley, Second Story Press and the author Manjusha for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

As much as I would like to call Manjusha inspirational, I don’t think she would thank me for it! She didn’t write this book to be thought of as brave or as some sort of warrior, she wrote it because actually she’s a really good writer who wanted to tell a story……a good story! Which is exactly what she’s done! Well that’s my interpretation.

Her story is of getting through each day in the face of cancer and the affects her treatment has on her and her family. Whilst her illness is obviously profoundly life changing and ultimately changed her as a person she details her journey so beautifully that it is clear she is one hell of a fighter.

I hope this isn’t her only book as I would love to read more from her.

Five stars are not given easily away by me but if I could have given six for this, I would!

This is a memoir of Manjusha’s journey after being diagnosed with cancer. In this book, she doesn’t hold back. She takes the reader out for a spin, through the cancer ward. She gives out all the details about the disease, including whole paragraphs about mutations, chromosomes, and a square dance.

But, this is not all this book is about. She talks about weird roommates in the cancer ward, craving a banana popsicle, and grappling with facing her mortality. As one of the reviewers remark, this book is both heartbreaking and uplifting. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me want to get to talk to Manjusha for 2 minutes. And, I mean Manjusha the author, not Manjusha the cancer survivor. This book is not all about the disease, and that’s exactly why I loved it. In between no-holds-barred explanations about ileostomy bags, she also tells us how she tried to set up her doctor with a friend.

She’s humorous and she’s philosophical. This could be just me, but I felt that some of her opinions about life and hope are extremely relatable. Look at this little gem:

“You think that if you are prepared for a catastrophe, it will not happen. I think of it in terms of circumvention. Because the gods don’t like it when your expectations are met, you trick them, by expecting something bad.”

Manjusha Pawaji writes her story with a brilliant sense of humor, and I would recommend this book to everyone. I believe that she was brave to battle cancer and I’m happy she’s alright now. As it’s said in the closing chapters in the book, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” So, thank you, Manjusha, for sharing with us the tale of a bunch of stuff that happened to you.

Having gone through chemo myself, and having written a book on cancer, I was a bit torn on whether or not to order this book. Had I had enough of reading and writing about chemo? But this book is so fresh it was a reward and an inspiration. It stands out for humor, yes, but more than that: honesty and literary inventiveness. It's a memoir of Manjusha Pawagi's life with a rare form of leukemia, but it is far from self-centered—we meet her large bubble of family and friends, learn about her as a child and as a judge, and get precise details on her treatments and reactions to them. The book is energetic and laugh-out-loud hilarious where others might be somber or maudlin. And her humor is so sophisticated and tied to the story it was difficult to simply share a line or two to explain to my husband what I was laughing about—instead, I am suggesting he read the book. Yet, Pawag pulls no punches about the serious risks she faced and her reckoning with death. Fortunately, that was postponed—I hope for many, many decades. This is one of those books for which the ending comes far too soon. I wanted Manjusha in my life a bit longer.

This book is written by someone who understands every minute of dealing with a cruel and indiscriminately disease.
She describes all the things you go through and so well, you almost. Feel like you and her become sisters as her journey progresses
I loved every minute of this book even the ones where I couldn't see the words through my tears, it is a truly memorable book I will never forget reading

This book provides tremendous first hand insight into the trials and tribulations of one very sick cancer patient who lives through the agony of chemotherapy, radiation and stem cell transplants. Why would you want to read about that?! The answer is simply that you will be a better friend and better family support to those who have cancer or any type of illness after reading this book. And, although Manjusha, the patient and author, is brutally honest about both the physical and mental anguish of the disease and her treatments, she is also delightful and witty as she shares her story. As I turned each page I wanted to know more. I was reminded to always follow the lead of the patient - it's not about what I think I should say or do - it's about what the patient needs and wants. And for all of us who love books you'll be glad to know this author does as well and that she shares some of her favorites books and quotes with us through her journey.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an ARC and giving me the opportunity to read this book and provide this honest feedback.

A very honest portrayal of life after receiving a cancer diagnosis. At times brutal and despairing, at others positive, witty and hopeful this book provides an insight into the impact such a diagnosis can have on a person and their family. The detailed chronicling of the therapy and the set-backs Manjusha faces as a result backs up the assertion of many patients that the treatment is often more difficult to cope with than the disease. The meeting with Manjusha's donor was handled sensitively and one would hope that this book will encourage more donors to come forward, irrespective of their ethnicity. The fact that Manjusha manages to regain her health and rebalance her life following her successful, but extremely difficult, treatment regime would make this an inspirational read for patients and care-givers alike.

Manjusha's experience with cancer, chemotherapy, and a stem cell implant is one of those great reads that will stay with you for a long, long time. The book is her incredible story of receiving painful cancer treatments, surviving long stays in the hospital, submitting to chemotherapy, obtaining a donor's stem cells, and eventually gaining her health back. Her incredible story also revolves around her husband's, friends' and family's constant support, and most gratifying of all (and now I'm getting the goose bumps back that I got at the end of her book), was the opportunity to finally meet her donor and his family.

Manjusha's writing hooked me from the very beginning. It is informative and gives great detail on the medical side. Manjusha also writes about her fears, feelings, and heartache about getting cancer. This is not a depressing book however, when you realize how much she went through. It is actually an uplifting story (and yes, there's a happy ending), and the writing is candid, and even humorous, at times. I highly recommend this wonderful read. Thank you for telling your story, Manjusha.

I received this book through NetGalley. (less)