Cancer Talk: A Review of Bright Side Running Club

The Bright Side Running Club,

Written by Josie Lloyd, 2022

Published by Alcove Press

I came across this book when searching for a podcast using the words "running" and "cancer".  It was published originally in Great Britain as "The Cancer Ladies Running Club" but inexplicably was renamed on this side of the Pond as "The Bright Side Running Club".  The title makes sense from the text of the book as there are several points in which the "Bright Side" is emphasized while running.

It's hard to hate on this book, but I'm going to, but I want to talk about the good parts first.  In the book the main character is a 50-something woman diagnosed with breast cancer.  She quickly falls in with a group of fellow breast cancer survivors who meet every week to run around a park.  The group is appropriately mismatched with the Bold One, the Movie Star, the Brooding One and the main character, who I guess you could call the Boring One.

On the plus side, the book deals frankly with a lot of the concerns that I felt when I had my own cancer, and which I suspect most cancer victims have, but which may not be acknowledged by those fortunate enough to not have cancer. Having cancer removes your sense of control and places you in the hands of a system that you don't really understand staffed by people you don't know. And the best you can ever get is vague assurances that a specific treatment is "usually effective".  Cancer specialists are probably coached to not dwell on what can go wrong (one problem at a time) and that's worthwhile, but the result is an apparent callousness to the concerns that the patient has.  This may be the 1000th patient a nurse or doctor has seen, but it's my first time around and I'd like to know a little more about what they know.  Surely they have an instinct about who's going to recover and who's going to relapse.

While the book is about breast cancer, I found a parallel with my bladder cancer.  The main character has to have a mastectomy and emotes rhapsodically about the loss of her boob.  The people around her had limited sympathy because she'd be cancer free afterwards and, after all, she could get an implant later.  In the bladder cancer realm, a lot of patients lose their bladders and I don't get the sense that the doctors and nurses are bothered by that.  My urologist once said "You can live without a bladder, but you can't live with cancer" which is true, but doesn't really help.  The loss of my bladder was terrifying to me and, thanks be to God! I didn't have to go through that.  Knowing the people get along OK without it, and climb mountains and ride bikes and travel all over the world without it helps only a little.  It's part of my body.  It's a part of my body that provides a useful service.  And I'd prefer to keep it.  The author put those feelings eloquently as the main character mourned the loss of her breast.  It's a kind of death.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't remove it if I had to.  But that doesn't mean I look forward to losing it, either.  It's better than being dead, but it still sucks. 

Bladder cancer is much less common than breast cancer and it doesn't have a noisy advocacy group to keep it on everyone's minds so there's much less research into it.  It seems like a lot of research ground to a halt a decade ago because, after all, the doctors can usually just remove the bladder and the cancer is gone.  But that's not good enough!  If your answer is "chop out an organ that keeps you in polite society", then your job isn't finished yet.

There was also an interesting look at how the other characters in the book dealt with their mom, wife and coworker after she got the news.  Some went overboard on the kindness, some carried on as if it were nothing and some withdrew because they didn't know what to say.  The main character was annoyed by all of it, but there was no clear answer on what she actually wanted them to do.  It seems like she wanted the overboarders to withdraw and the carryoners to go overboard and the withdrawers to carry on.  That's kind of accurate.  But actually, I only told a very few people outside of my family about my diagnosis.  It was in the middle of the pandemic when everyone was at home and so it didn't seem necessary. I didn't need to explain my absences, except to my boss, since no one realized I was absent.  And I didn't feel like going public on social media (which I still haven't done).

Finally, there was a frank look at the main character's fears at work.  In the book, she was a co-owner of a store and got pushed out because of her inability to work a steady schedule.  In my life, I was afraid to tell people at work because I thought I'd get cut out from important projects ("Better not put Ben on that team, he might not make it to the end.")  In reality, that was probably a baseless fear, yet the account in this book resonated with me.

In real life, the author really did get breast cancer and really did connect with a running club during treatment.  I assume that the "cancer" things in the book, like the surgery, chemo, radiation and side effects and her emotional response are accurate.  Everything else is fictional, from what I've gathered.  Interestingly, I found out about this book by searching for a podcast about "running" and "cancer" but it wasn't on "cancer" podcasts or a "running" podcasts but on a couple "writing" podcasts.  It's likely she simply doesn't want to get into her experiences on a cancer podcast, which I can relate to.  I'm 2 years from the surgery at some day I want to join a bladder cancer support group or hang out with a bladder cancer group but ... not right now.

But that leads to the bad things.  In the book the main character runs a store but it's clear that the author doesn't know anything about that.  In real life the author's husband is a writer, but in the book he's a lawyer and it's hard to believe she knows a lot about that either.  In real life her husband was kind of and loving and supportive but in the book he was a thorn in her side that she basically pushed away.  Those things are all difficult to read because they are so far out.  Like someone read a dictionary definition of "lawyer" and decided that they know enough to write a book about lawyers.  It's just shallow and, ultimately, leads to a preposterous resolution chapter where all problems are solved in the space of three pages.

But my main complaint about the book is that the main character just isn't very likable.  There's a trope in pop culture that all cancer patients are kind loving heroic figures who walk around with a beatific smile and lovingly touch everyone they meet, giving live even as theirs slip away.  And that may really happen, but not to me.  I learned a lot from my cancer and most of what I learned was that I am a coward. I don't consider myself "brave" or "heroic" in any sense and I can switch from "tolerable" to "asshole" at a moment's notice. So in a sense the main character's depiction is accurate: you can be a cancer patient AND an asshole.  But no one calls her out for her assholery.  She is the perpetual victim and everyone else has to compensate (see the "withdrawers" above). And in the end everyone must apologize to her.  She's just so whiny.  It makes me nervous that that's how I was when I was still pretty raw over the news.

Listening to the podcasts the author was on, I'm not sure I'd really like her in real life either.  There's a story in the book where someone gave the main character a butterfly necklace as a sign of hope from one cancer survivor to another.  She got the necklace, then found the main character and decided she could use it as well.  That happened in real life.  The author mentioned that it was still hanging up on her writing table as she was talking on the podcast.  And went on and on about how this nice lady gave the necklace to her.  But the point in the book was to pass it on, not accept it as a perpetual testament to your awesomeness.  But who knows?  Maybe she has passed it on by now.  I don't know how things like "support systems" work.

Finally, the disappointment in the book, which is my fault and not the book's, is that there's no real "running" in it.  The "running club" part is a social thing, which is fine.  But are passing references to running helping with the after effects of chemo but nothing like "running has saved my life!" which I was hoping for.  For all the frank discussions about the physical and emotional toll that cancer has, there's nothing about the running. No one pulls a hamstring or twists an ankle. No one has to miss a day because they threw their back out or allergies set up in their chest.  They just bounce out of bed, lace up their shoes and off they go!  Well, not exactly (there is a health emergency during running, but it's chemo related), but for a guy who's had running injuries too numerous to count, it's frustrating to read.

I got the book from the library and I'm glad I didn't buy it.  I am still appreciative about the good things in the book. The frank recounting of the thoughts that go through a cancer patient's mind are refreshing to read.  They made me feel validated in a way, I guess.