Health Care Guide Press Releases

Cancer Survivor's Book Signing

PRINCETON, NJ: The same determination that propelled Wayne Cooke to flag down a jet in Charles DeGaulle Airport in 1977 has helped him fight cancer for the last six years. Cooke has published a memoir with how-to tips for cancer patients and their friends and caregivers. He will speak and sign “On the Far Side of the Curve: A Stage IV Colon Cancer Survivor’s Journey” on Sunday, February 21, at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Princeton United Methodist Church, at Nassau and Vandeventer.

Cooke will speak at a breakfast sponsored by the PUMC’s United Methodist Men; both men and women are invited. Call 609-924-2613 for $5 reservations.  Then he will have a book signing session at 1 p.m. Half of the proceeds will go to the church.

After Cooke’s 30-year IBM career took him to the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Paris, he and his family returned to their home in Princeton Township, where he and his wife Pat are Realtors with Coldwell Banker’s Nassau Street office. He sings with Voices chorale and with the church choir.   

Despite a clean colonoscopy in August 2000, Cooke was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in November 2003. Six years later, in a dramatic account about making it to the far end of the survival curve, he shares the lessons, coping techniques, wisdom, humor, and enthusiasm that have supported him.

Oncologist Peter Yi, who wrote the foreword, recommends the book’s valuable healing lessons to everyone who has cancer or has a loved one with cancer. Cooke, he says, “shows how one can treat cancer as a chronic disease and to live with cancer while maintaining a good quality of life. He teaches us that while cancer has many side effects, one can still live a life of wisdom, faith and love.”