Today is the official release date Sheri Nocelli's book "Life, Love ... Leukemia." Not by happenstance, it is also the five year anniversary of Sheri's Bone Marrow Transplant that helped her overcome and beat out a diagnosis of an extremely rare subtype of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. In a truthful memoir, this Lincroft mother of two bares her soul and shares her very personal and private experiences with her readers. Chronicling her life experiences as she meets her true love, grows her family, builds a successful business with her husband, and faces her diagnosis and lengthy but successful battle with Leukemia, Sheri's story is compelling on many levels.
"Life, Love...Leukemia" is a page turner and engages the reader in her life experiences from the very beginning. Written in a casual and conversational tone with a blog-style fashion, Sheri expresses how she pulls on every ounce of self-proclaimed "rocker" strength to successfully fight Leukemia and emerge the winner in the battle. Unabashedly, she shares her ups and her very low downs throughout the fight with Cancer. The downright honesty that is so apparent in this book keeps you moving through the story with great interest and compassion for her plight, yet admiration for her strength.
A combination of entries from her online blog during her hospital stay, bone marrow transplant, and recovery are coupled with excerpts from her medical records and with her post-experience written dialogue-style account to come together and make this story complete. She shares her daily struggles and the irony of the fact that after she finally achieved a somewhat settled reality after having battled for her husband and family and home, she was in turn diagnosed with the Leukemia, and forced to battle even more. The old adage that it takes an army came to fruition as Sheri was forced to depend on friends, family, and acquaintances to help her tend to her children's needs while she battled for her life and her husband kept their business thriving to support their home and also join forces with her in the battle against Leukemia.
Sheri doesn't hold back in her recounting of these periods in her life, just as she didn't hold back on life during her battle with Leukemia. Throughout her cancer battle, Sheri is unequivocally grateful to her husband for his support and she goes back to her love for her husband and children to draw strength and motivation. However, she also attributes much of her success in her battle to her rocker spunk. To share a bit of her spunk, here's a quote from her story that gives you a feel for her take-it-on attitude towards overcoming the cancer: "Every day I pick a vibrant scarf and big obnoxious earrings to rock out. I don't care that I'm bald, I have no eyebrows or how pale I appear to the general public like I did in the beginning. I choose not to care. I choose to embrace this, and be a shining beacon of positivity for all to see."
In addition to some unexpected laugh out loud moments, one thanks to Sheri's Aunt during one of her hospital stays, Sheri's book made me step back, appreciate the small and mundane things in the experience of everyday, and further, it made me appreciate the trivial nature of most things that we allow to upset us in a given day. It was a true dose of perspective. I am inspired by the strength that she has shown in both overcoming the cancer and secondarily but no less importantly, openly sharing her story for the benefit of others. This is not simply a story of her sickness and fight for good health, but it is a story of her life experiences and her family as well. It couples who she is with what she's undergone to give a full picture of it all together to the reader.
Sheri and I had a chance to speak, and she shared that there were really no age appropriate books available for her to turn to during her battle with Leukemia. She also stated that she hadn't shared many of the very personal experiences chronicled in this book with anyone else at all prior to putting them down on the pages. In writing her story, she hopes it to be a resource available to others who are fighting similar battles. She also hopes it will give others who have been fortunate not to face such a challenge a perspective on what she lived with and overcame, and all that was involved in the journey. I encourage you to read it for yourself, but I will leave you with my favorite quote from page 193 of the book: "There's no time in the world to be hopeless; life is short as it is, so live it - own it - enjoy it! It is a gift. Life is truly a gift from the universe to each and every one of us. You're fortunate, I'm fortunate; every human we encounter on this planet during our lifetime has the gift of life - so LIVE it!"
Ready to get yourself a copy of the book? It is now available at SheriNocelli.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and digitally through Kindle, Nook and iBookstore. For more on the author, the book, and her experiences, go visit and support her Facebook page here with a "like". Sheri will be interviewed LIVE on XM Radio Channel 81 this Wednesday July 24th from 12:00-12:30, so tune in to hear more from her personally about her story and motivation for publishing this book.
Thanks to Sheri for providing an advance copy of her book for the purpose of this review. Additionally, one very lucky Macaroni Kid Lincroft-Holmdel-Tinton Falls subscriber will win an autographed copy of Life, Love...Leukemia by Sheri Nocelli. For your chance to win the autographed book, simply complete the entry form by clicking here. You can enter once per day until July 30th at 12 p.m. at which time the drawing will close. Good luck!
