The best thing I can do every day to support my mental health involves nothing more arduous than stepping out into my garden. Nature heals, calms, soothes, grounds me and delights me. I didn’t always fully appreciate these gifts, but like many of us, the enforced...
Those of us who live with cancer so often feel we’re under threat. Each time I meet my oncologist to discuss my latest scan, I plunge into a state of ‘fight or flight’ at the terrifying thought that my treatment might not be keeping the cancer at bay. As skilled as he...
There is something I do many times a week that brings me immediate relief from tension and greatly reduces my stress. And I am quite sure it helps my mental health. And yet, whenever I cry outside the privacy of my own home, I seem to cause alarm or embarrassment....
Every fortnight, I share my deepest and most painful thoughts and feelings with a woman I have never met in person. We connect with each other for 50 minutes via Zoom and together, since I was first diagnosed with a recurrent cancer last June, we have explored the...
When my oncologist delivered the verdict that my cancer was incurable though hopefully treatable, my immediate response wasn’t fear or anxiety – it was the most intense loneliness. I felt, with his words, though gently delivered, that I had somehow been cast out from...
The last funeral I attended took all of 45 minutes from start to interment, less than 30 seconds for each year of a wonderful life lived by the deceased. When it comes to death, my culture (white, working class British) doesn’t like to waste its time. “Why do I feel...
One effect of my cancer diagnosis has been an intensification of my concern for the world. At a time when I imagined I might spend my days in quiet introspection, I find instead my whole body tensing in preparation to fight some injustice or other. God, I am so angry....
I suspect that the phrase most guaranteed to make those living with cancer cringe is, ‘You’re so brave!’ Of course, when people say this, I smile sweetly and receive the compliment graciously. But it’s odd the effect the phrase has on me. I feel at once elevated – and...
For millions of people living with cancer, life can feel like it’s in the balance on the day we get our scan results. Is the treatment working? And what if it isn’t? It is the morning of the day I get the results of my three-monthly scan to check how my cancer is...
This World Cancer Day, I've been wondering if this wretched disease has taught me anything... Hollywood actor Stanley Tucci was asked in a recent radio interview what he thought was the best way to deal with cancer. He was diagnosed with oral cancer in 2018 and...