Chemo and pickles don’t go well together

Succasunna, NJ, August 28, 2021— Hearing the news that you have cancer is like getting a gut punch. Then, after the shock dies down, you start asking questions: How bad is it? What are my next steps? Why me? Where are you God?! Do You even care?

After her journey through breast cancer Adria Howard-Moore decided she wanted to lend a helping hand to others (both patients and caregivers) who found themselves on Team C. At times comical, but always frank and honest, her book, From Breast Cancer to Blessed Answer-One Woman’s Journey from Diagnosis to Tattoos, (August 2021, WestBow Press) gives you a ringside seat to her bumpy, but hope-filled ride from panicky start to peaceful, new beginning.

“Everything was a blur for the first couple of weeks after I got my diagnosis,” says Howard-Moore. “You’re running back and forth to so many doctors and hospitals for test after test. Family members asked a lot of questions, but I didn’t know what to say. You’re just kind of going through the motions…doing what the physicians tell you to do because you aren’t quite sure what to do. Eventually, I realized I had to live with the decisions that were being made, so I had better get my head in the game.”

Howard-Moore interjects levity whenever possible, as in the day she went out to dinner with her family and finally came to the realization that she had cancer.

The waiter returned and presented us with a bowl of pickles. Not bread, like most restaurants. No, this restaurant gave us pickles. These were not just any pickles; these were huge, nasty, spicy pickles. Nothing goes better with a body full of chemo than that. If I had not been sick, I suppose I would have welcomed the crisp half-sours. As it was, I was starving and decided it was much better to consume this unusual appetizer than chow down on the arm of my chair. I took a small bite, but the pungent pickle packed a punch. On second thought, the chair was starting to look appetizing. When the food arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find it tasted very good. Unfortunately, with every morsel I chewed, the flavor soon turned sour, and I finally had to call it a night when I felt like I was pouring salt down my gullet. By the time we left, I was quite frustrated and cried all the way home. It was then that it finally hit me that I was sick. I had been fighting off admitting this for almost five months. Now, reality came crashing down on me like a nine-hundred-pound hailstone. I finally acknowledged to myself that I had cancer.

Readers will find this book both informative and inspirational and hopefully have a chuckle or two in between. In her unique style you’ll read how sand in her shoes shortened her chemotherapy treatments and how God used the very thing she hated to changer her life.

Howard-Moore is a New Jersey native not famous for anything. For more information, blogs and fun WHAT?! Facts, visit her website at www.ahowardmoore.com. From Breast Cancer to Blessed Answer, is now available in both paperback and hardcover at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Westbow Press Bookstore.