One of the best-written memoirs I've ever read, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, is driven by the author's battle with jaw cancer. Diagnosed with a horrific form when she was nine and given a 5% chance of survival, Lucy underwent a barrage of treatments and surgeries that left her with a partial jaw. The book focuses on how her disfigurement and subsequent attempts at reconstructive surgery affected her psychosocial development; still, she writes a fair amount, in detail, about what she went through as a child. She was a brilliant writer, RIP. (She was a writing classmate and friend of mine in college; she died of an apparent heroin overdose in 2002, her addiction an indirect result of her cancer.)
