For people whose bodies are allergic to, say, gluten or peanuts, just a trace of the material in their food, perhaps derived from a mixing bowl or a beater or a knife, is enough to trigger a bad immune reaction. Similarly for anxiety sufferers a small event, a word, an image, perhaps part of an […]
You don\’t battle cancer. But you do battle the side effects, physical and mental, of its treatment.
I used to reconstruct fossil bones. Fragmented by the pressure of soil over thousands of years, perhaps trodden on by a wandering beast, broken by the changes in moisture and temperature. I would strengthen the fragments with a soluble glue, then look for edges that matched, colours that were the same, textures that were similar,
Dem bones, dem bones Read More »
Some years ago one of the cancer agencies came up with a slogan \”Cancer: A word not a sentence\”. Clever eh? At one level, yes, fine, being told you have cancer is no longer, as it was once, a certain, and fairly prompt, death sentence. It is just a word, like words for many other diseases
I hate the \”Battle\” metaphor for cancer. Someone is always \”bravely battling\” brain cancer or \”losing the battle\” with lung cancer. What piffle, would you describe someone who has fallen off a cliff as having \”lost their battle with gravity\”? I prefer to think of it as walking a tightrope. A long tightrope with the
Walking on a thin line Read More »
I once asked a farmer friend if he was concerned about the long-lasting drought of the time. He wasn\’t, he said, because every day the drought went on was another day closer to the drought ending. Real glass half-full stuff. For normal people, every negative cancer test since their last treatment for cancer is a
At the 3-monthly cancer review the oncologist should be like a town crier – \”It is February and all is well\”; \”It is May and all is well\”; \”It is August and all hell has broken loose, half the town is on fire, and the other half occupied by Goths and Vandals, try to stay
If perfectly healthy people can suffer from hypochondria, do people with cancer suffer from hyperchondria?
Told you I was ill Read More »
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall – and all the King\’s Doctors, Oncologists, Gastroenterologists, Dermatologists, Psychiatrists, Otolaryngologists, Cardiologists and Ophthalmologists gingerly and gradually put Humpty together again.
