Lisa Reisman Book Event at Main Point Books

Author, reporter, and triathlete Lisa Reisman will have a book event at Main Point Books located at 1041 W Lancaster Ave, Carroll Park, PA 19096 on Wednesday, September 9, 2015 at 7 pm. ET.

More about 5 Months 10 Years 2 Hours

5 MONTHS

On August 1, 1998, 32-year-old disillusioned New York attorney Lisa Reisman is poised to leave the law and hit the road in a lipstick-red convertible. Instead, she suffers a massive seizure and is found unconscious in her apartment 46 hours later. After undergoing brain surgery at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Hospital, she is diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal of brain tumors, and given a prognosis of one year to live.

In the midst of six weeks of daily radiation and six rounds of chemotherapy at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Reisman gradually works to recreate her daily life. Left with no hair and a severely weakened immune system, she overhauls her diet, memorizes poetry, and engages in a strict exercise regimen to combat the ever-present fear of dying and death.

Five months later, she undergoes an MRI that shows the cancer cells have not spread. While her doctors tell her she’s not cured and follow-up MRIs will continue indefinitely, they show optimism that she is in the clear.

10 YEARS

Through the next ten years, Reisman faces what seems an even more daunting challenge: how to make a life equal to her miraculous recovery. Determined to forge an identity separate from one of survivor, she spends years riding on a series of successes and failures—as a writer, in dead-end jobs, and in a string of short-term relationships.

2 HOURS

During the two hours of a grueling triathlon to mark her ten-year anniversary of surviving the disease, Reisman realizes she’s already found what she’s been looking for: her family and friends on the sidelines and her work crafting stories for a small newspaper about the unsung people, businesses, and visitors in her tiny corner of the world that lend her existence meaning and worth.

About the Author

Lisa Reisman is a Connecticut freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Shoreline Times, the New Haven Register, the Middletown Press, Connecticut Magazine, and Poets & Writers Magazine. She currently highlights people on the Connecticut shoreline who are launching new enterprises and making a difference in the lives of others. She also manages the Sin Sisters Band, a popular Connecticut group with a repertoire that ranges from swing to Motown to classic rock.

Reisman studied Ancient Greek and Latin at Haverford, Oxford and Yale, and law at the University of Virginia. She practiced law in New York City for four years.

A Dean’s Fellow at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, she also has been supported by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and Wesleyan University, and a work study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

PRAISE for 5 Months 10 Years 2 Hours

“Those in search of another treacly cancer memoir need not even glance at this...

Reisman’s unflinching and moving tale puts to rest the image of patient as

warrior... By linking her own ordeal to the triathlon she took on to mark her 10 year anniversary, she reveals the true nature of cancer survival – not as a triumph of epic

valor, but as a feat of endurance, forbearance and true grit.”

– Lisa Sanders, MD, New York Times columnist and fellow cancer survivor

“A meticulously written book that tells a remarkable story of not simply survival

but of hard-won, bone-deep change... I recommend it to anyone who wants to

understand what life is really about.”

– Joan Leegant, Wherever You Go

“A gripping memoir of a horrendous diagnosis... Reisman personifies courage in

the face of overwhelming odds.”

– John Henning Schumann, MD, NPR’s “Shots”

5 MONTHS 10 YEARS 2 HOURS

Lisa Reisman

$16.00 170 pages

ISBN 9781937402709 (pbk)

ISBN 9781937402716 (ebook)

Distributor: Ingram