A Cancer Biologist’s Journey with Rare Cancer
THE BOOK
Becoming
the Experiment
MEMOIRJEN SCHAFER, PHD
COMING SOON
Becoming the Experiment
A Cancer Biologist’s Journey with Rare Cancer
ABOUT THE BOOK
Dr. Jen Schafer built her career studying cancer biology, spending thirty years researching why tumors resist treatment and what new technologies are needed to improve cancer care. Then, in the span of a five-minute phone call, she became a patient herself, diagnosed with a sarcoma so rare there was almost no research to guide her care.
Becoming the Experiment follows Jen’s journey from that first diagnosis through a devastating recurrence that turned “curable” into “terminal” overnight, a clinical trial that failed, and a last-chance experimental treatment that produced a response so unlikely her own oncologist called her the 0.1 percent.
This is not a story about beating cancer through willpower, nor a clinical account written from a safe distance. It is both at once: a scientist’s precise understanding of her own biology, and a mother’s raw account of preparing her children for a future she wasn’t sure she’d be part of. Jen writes about the “in-between,” the liminal space so many people with serious illness must learn to live in, where hope has to coexist with uncertainty rather than replace it.
Five years later, Jen is NED: no evidence of disease. She now works as a certified health transition coach, helping others navigate their own life-changing diagnoses, drawing on both the science she spent her career studying and the other healing modalities that she discovered along the way.
Becoming the Experiment is a hopeful account of a Stage IV cancer healing journey and is for anyone who has received a life-changing diagnosis.
Hope has to coexist with uncertainty rather than replace it.
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