Many women, particularly here in the Northwest, wouldn’t wear four-inch heels if their lives depended on it, but for cancer survivor Marisa Acocella Marchetto, they were a life saver.

New York cartoonist Marchetto has just released “Cancer Vixen,” a graphic memoir about her battle with cancer. Shoes played an important part in that battle.

As she chronicles in the cartoon-strip style book, she decided to wear a different pair of glamorous shoes to every chemotherapy session. She called it “shoe therapy” — “While I was going through chemotherapy, I didn’t want to focus on the IV in my hand, so I’d look down at my feet and give myself a little shoe therapy. My thought was, ‘Yes, this needle sucks, but what a pretty pair of shoes.’”

Marchetto presents “Cancer Vixen” Oct. 26 at Eagle Harbor Books.

Her life was and is very different from most women here, with a glamorous job drawing cartoons for top magazines such as Glamour and The New Yorker, an apartment in Manhattan and a husband who owns a star-studded restaurant and a stable of Italian race cars.

But when her doctor finds a pea-sized lump in her breast, she joins the reluctant, global sorority of women who have breast cancer.

The book takes a serious subject and makes it approachable. The comic book style lets you know that there is going to be a great deal of humor on her path to wellness, but there’s no getting around the fact that this is a life or death matter. Marchetto wrote the book during the 11 months of her treatment. She is now cancer free.

Like many women, Marchetto was at the peak of her life in many ways — 43 with a fabulous career, engaged to the dashing restaurateur Silvano Marchetto, when the cancer diagnosis brought all that to a halt. Adding to the stress, she had no insurance. She estimated the recommended treatment would cost nearly $200,000.

“In the exact moment I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my carefree, fashion-obsessed New York City life had ceased to exist as I had known it,” she said in a recent interview. “My priorities shifted, and what was important to me suddenly became inconsequential. My life was in jeopardy. …my No. 1 priority was taking control of my life, cutting out everything and anything that could possibly cause cancer, and looking forward to all the reasons to live and focusing on living a healthy life. Besides, I was getting married in three weeks for the first time at 43!”

“Cancer Vixen” originally ran as a six page cartoon in Glamour in May 2005. That caught the attention of editors at the New York Times, who ran a feature story on Marchetto and her comic on the front page of the Sunday Arts section.

While Marchetto lives in the rarified atmosphere of the rich and famous, her experience with cancer gave her empathy for those who struggle with cancer without the financial and emotional support she had. (After she married Marchetto she was able to use his insurance to cover her medical bills.) She is donating a percentage of the book’s proceeds to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and to underprivileged women at the Comprehensive Cancer Center affiliated with St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.

She is also the author of “Just Who the Hell is She, Anyway,” and illustrated the book “Closing the Deal: Two Married Guys Reveal the Dirty Truth to Getting Your Man to Commit.” “Cancer Vixen” is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Marchetto presents “Cancer Vixen” 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.