Running for Our Lives: An Odyssey with Cancer

When the doctor first announces the diagnosis "cancer," patients, families and friends feel as if they are struck by lightning--scared, dazed, and confused. So are Barry Riccio, at age 38, suddenly faced with a rare form of cancer, leiomyosarcoma, and his wife, Kathryn Anthony. On that fateful day their lives are forever changed. In gripping detail, Running for Our Lives chronicles the authors’ seven-year emotional roller coaster ride across five states and scores of doctors, nurses, and medical staff. It explains how persistence, research, and outreach help them wage their battle, when, as their doctor warns them, they are "sitting on a barrel of dynamite." Running for Our Lives inspires patients facing devastating diagnoses of cancer and other life-threatening illness, the families and friends who care about them, as well as medical researchers, physicians, oncology nurses, hospice providers and staff who work with terminally ill patients every day. It provides a window into the authors’ private world, one where they are dangling off a cliff, and the struggle to stay alive overshadows all else.