Powerful, unsentimental poems about the ability to have cancer and still retain a raunchy energy for life, with the support of those around you. Pat Clifford is writing poems and prayers, elegies and lamentations, about her experiences in the daily fight for her life. She stares the mad stranger of cancer in the eye and dares it to try and take away her humanity and her love of life. She embraces plain, direct language in engaging the battle. As Susan Sontag demands in Illness as Metaphor, she must, at all stages, undress the concealing language of those who seek to dress up the plain truth. Clifford makes it clear that she has not been alone in that fight. She pays tribute to the family and dearest friends who have supported her in so many ways throughout her battle. And she witnesses and honours the many women she has gotten to know in the support group at her cancer centre. They become more than a random collection of women thrown together by dire circumstances.