This is the story of an implausible twenty-year saga which wanders across faraway deserts, mountains, and jungles—with astounding detours through the halls of academia and the American medical establishment.
Like the off-path explorer he is, Jim Doilney throws away the guidebooks and maps “ . . . to see places where nobody goes, to meet people nobody knows.” But in the midst of his decades long odyssey, he is diagnosed with life-threatening prostate cancer.
The state-of-the-art medical solutions he is offered—which he characterized as “butcher me, bake me, burn me, or break me”—he refused. And began his quest to find his own answers and ultimate cure.
All the years Jim battled his demoralizing cancer, he defiantly continued to travel to distant places. These are his detailed one-of-a-kind experiences. Along with his unique explorations of the foibles in American medicine.
The discoveries Jim makes and the lessons he learns were not in the medical journals and best practices. But the result may be one of the most important and life-changing guidebooks for tens of thousands of aging men who even now face the same grim diagnoses and brutal choices.
If you are an armchair adventurer, a weekend hiker, someone who just loves an authentic tale, or simply a past middle-age man wondering if prostate cancer has its sights on you—Doilney’s journal is for you.
If you are a medical professional, you will be nodding your head as you read along. Because you know the book’s title is cruel but true.
