The definition of irony is being a nurse and a nursing instructor, who suddenly ends up being a patient (who knows way too much) with breast cancer. Well, maybe irony isn’t the exact word Maryellen D. Brisbois uses to describe her situation in her book Why I Hated Pink – it’s just that the word she does use, while a whole lot funnier, is also more profane than should be used in this format. It’s all here; the shock, the tears, the anger, the horrifying treatments and frustrating medical establishment, but there’s also a lot to laugh at – once you get past the whole life and death thing. Oh yeah – there are also all those damn pink ribbons.

“Are you sitting down?” I swear that’s what the nurse practitioner said as I picked up the phone early one December morning in 2006. They really say that to people, It’s not just in the movies!” So begins this moving and hilarious memoir written by a nursing instructor turned cancer patient whose life and experience with the world of cancer treatment has just gone from being the caregiver to being the one who needs the care – and she had just celebrated her 41st birthday a couple of days before.

“I mean, I never thought I’d find myself in an MRI machine lying on my stomach with my breasts hanging toward the floor in these “cone-like” compartments. All I could think was that a man must have invented such a thing.” Thankfully, the Maryellen D. Brisbois story has a happy ending – and a lot of laughs along the way. But this is serious book, about a serious subject that affects far too many women; our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. Many of them will be facing the fight of their lives – as they fight FOR their lives. Reading Why I Hated Pink by Maryellen D. Brisbois will make that fight a little easier for those women, and offer a much needed laugh along the way.