Big Ol’ Lemonades - Diagnosed at 30 - What NOW? Wednesday, February 15, 2023

"I wrote the book I couldn't find when I was diagnosed." With the sarcastic humor that often gets us through the darkest of times, Leah Cohn makes Big Ol’ Lemonades out of her breast cancer diagnosis at 30 with a memoir offering that rare look into choosing how to live a life worth living. Leah Cohn is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, educator, coach, and all-around powerhouse who used writing to process finding cancer, selecting double mastectomy with reconstruction, and enduring a year of post-surgical treatment Tamoxifen with all the side effects. She combines telling the story years later with journal entries detailing in-the-moment experiences she wrote at the time, framed by flashback vignettes that create a multi-faceted look at the decision-making processes and lessons learned when facing the tough choices and varying emotions of a young woman with early stage breast cancer. This was what Leah couldn’t find when she was diagnosed – the memoirs of women who were battling “less-aggressive” cancers before having children. You know, the “good kind” of cancer. She wanted to hear about women who didn’t do chemo, didn’t take the pills, maybe opted for one or the other, chose more aggressive surgery in support of less aggressive chemical treatments, or opted to take an alternative path than those that women often feel pressured to take “if they want to live.” Big Ol’ Lemonades exemplifies the kind of determination, courage, and faith that a woman must cultivate to make it out laughing on the other side of the traumas that life brings our way.