Having cancer and how to live with it

Having cancer and how to live with it
Angela Wilkie, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1993, £8.99

This review by Ovacome member Claire Duchen was published in the summer 1998 newsletter.

Angela Wilkie was a journalist, 36 years old and a mother of two young children, when diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This book is the story of her illness and helpful advice about living with it.

I knew I would like the book as soon as I read the blurb: 'I’ll tell you what this isn’t. It isn’t a story about how I bravely battled against cancer and lived to find true happiness. It isn’t about how facing death made me a better and nicer person.' Hurray, I thought. Like Angela, I feel that cancer has taught me nothing that I wanted to know, although we always try to salvage something good from the experience.

Angela had to fight to have her symptoms taken seriously, went through surgery and chemo, crawled back to health, relapsed and had to endure more surgery. She haemorrhaged and nearly died, had radiotherapy and slowly recovered, writing this book 18 months after her treatment. Grim stuff, but she tells it very well and with terrific humour. Some parts are moving, others are funny. I liked the way she points out that life isn’t unrelieved gloom when one has cancer: as she says, you can do only so much wailing and gnashing of teeth before the mind gets bored and changes the subject. I liked the positive tone of the book, but she doesn’t flinch from the negative. She doesn’t avoid describing her despair, but also singles out moments which gave her strength to keep fighting.

The second part looks at having cancer, in other words at all the external things we have to deal with on top of the disease itself: the often sensational way cancer is discussed in the media; our partners, families and friends and how to cope when they don’t react in the ways we want them to; doctors and nurses, hospitals, drugs; visualisation and other calming techniques. It is well written and helpful.

The book is a reminder that there is life after, and indeed during, cancer; we are always more than our disease. I felt really cheered and heartened by reading it. Although published five years ago and might not be easily available in book shops, it does seem to be widely kept in libraries, so you should be able to find a copy.