Review: 90 Days to Live by Rodney and Paige Stamps

A cancer diagnosis is one of the most dreaded pieces of news to receive from a doctor, and with more than 1 million new cancer cases each year, this disease feels like an unavoidable part of modern life. In 90 Days to Live: Beating Cancer When Modern Medicine Offers No Hope, authors Paige and Rodney Stamps pull back the curtain on their own lives and Rodney’s diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Unlike so many other memoirs or books about patient journeys through endless rounds of treatment, remission, heartbreaks and breakthroughs, this is a story of hope via alternate methods, and an inspiring tale of survival against all odds.

Given the aggressive nature of Rodney’s cancer, and the fact that it was caught relatively late, his doctor initially gave Rodney 90 days to live unless a full treatment regimen was begun immediately. Even with chemotherapy and an aggressive approach to the cancer, his chance of survival remained dismally low. Instead of falling in line with millions of other suffering families, this brave couple decided to buck the trend and attempt to treat Rodney’s brutal disease with a holistic regimen of enzyme therapy, dietary alterations, and other all-natural solutions that the formal medical establishment would never advise.

Dually written by husband and wife, the book provides a uniquely comprehensive perspective of this disease and their tumultuous road to remission. What is particularly striking is that Paige and Rodney capture the myriad ways that this disease affected their lives, and all of the changes they were required to make – some obvious and some completely unexpected. From encouraging their terrified daughter to continue working hard in school, despite her father’s diagnosis, to eliminating all junk food and sweets in the house, to navigating temperament changes and mood swings, this book holds little back. Touching on frequently overlooked elements of the whole family of a patient, rather than the patient alone, this book is unique in its scope.

Both Paige and Rodney offer a different tone as narrators, but their honesty is consistently compelling, as is their rich memory of this difficult period in their lives. Many of the details of Rodney’s treatment regimen are included, but the book is carefully prefaced with a warning that neither of the authors are medical professionals, and are not qualified to deliver medical advice. While their family’s experience and Rodney’s remission are remarkable, their approach should not be taken as a guaranteed end-around to cancer treatment. As authors, this is a very responsible position to take from the very first page, which unfortunately is not always the case with books on this subject.

Bouncing back and forth between viewpoints never gets distracting, although there is some repetition in ideas and events where the duplication doesn’t provide much additional insight. There are also some elements of the story – such as the couple’s business development during this entire process – that doesn’t seem as relevant to the story as a whole, but as a critical part of their lives at that time, its inclusion is somewhat understandable. On the whole, the narrative variety is interesting, the dialogic sequences are believable, and the emotions spilled out on the pages can only be described as authentic.

All told, this co-authored memoir functions as a helpful guide, a hopeful prayer, and an eye-opening approach for managing one of our greatest human scourges.