Cancer as Silent Killer in ‘Memoir of a Debulked Woman’

Ovarian cancer is called the silent killer. Most women don’t receive a diagnosis until the disease has spread and the chances for survival have dwindled. Unlike breast cancer, the chances for long-term survival with ovarian cancer have hardly improved since the 1970s.
The available treatments are extraordinarily painful, as  Dr. Vivian Bearing, the main character in Margaret Edson’s play “Wit,” explains: “I am in isolation because I am being treated for cancer,” she says. “My treatment imperils my health. Herein lies the paradox.”  
Like Vivian Bearing,  Susan Gubar  is a professor of English coping with ovarian cancer. Yet Professor Gubar’s story of diagnosis and treatment is quite different from the one Margaret Edsons chronicles in “Wit.” Susan’s new book is called “Memoir of a Debulked Woman.”
You can read an excerpt on our blog.