Have I got news for you

I DON'T think anyone could have been more breast aware than me.

Having had two fibroadenoma (benign breast lumps) removed at the age of 25, I've checked my breasts diligently ever since. So you can imagine how relieved I was in May last year when, having gone to Charing Cross Hospital with a swelling under my right arm, I was told I had nothing to worry about.

Paul and I decided that we would celebrate at the nearby River Cafe.

We sat outside, drank prosecco and laughed and laughed because we were so happy and so relieved. And we talked about Late, the Radio 4 series we'd just made together, and the episode of Have I Got News for You that had been recorded the night before. And our plans for the summer. And the IVF that we'd now be starting that might give us the child we longed for.

Eight months later, on a cold, grey February afternoon, we sat outside the same airless hospital room. We held hands very, very tightly. Two days previously, they'd taken out the small lump I had found in January.

"You again," the consultant had said, recognising Paul, not me. "Oh dear, yes," he had continued, examining my left breast. "Well, nothing to worry about, but we'll take it out to make sure." Now we were waiting to find out if it was invasive.

It was. It was cancer. I would need another operation in five days' time, more flesh taken out, and my lymph nodes, too - major surgery. Two months earlier, I'd been at Guys Hospital having IVF treatment. Now they were telling me I might need chemotherapy, which would almost certainly leave me infertile.

When you're told you have cancer, the world stops. You feel as if you're watching everyone through a glass, brightly. They're alive. They know, or think, they'll be alive next week, next year. But you might not be.

Everything you do, every meal you eat, every piece of music you hear, every blossom you see feels as if it might be your last. You might die - soon.

I don't think I could have got through those first weeks without Paul. He was still recording Room 101 when I was in hospital but he came to see me twice a day. To have to be spontaneously funny when your wife is being operated on for cancer must be a nightmare. As soon as the series finished, he cut down on all his commitments, and he was with me through that endless cycle of doctors' surgeries.

At the beginning, we went through a tidal wave of emotion: disbelief, anger, grief. There was numbness, too. In the midst of this, there were some amazing moments. Making love became even deeper, and even more emotional. We went away in early spring, and there were daffodils and crocuses bursting through everywhere. I can remember every detail of those walks.

And we laughed. We watched Dad's Army, Laurel and Hardy - and The Simpsons, which always seemed to have a pertinent message about the soul, or the fifth dimension, or the nature of love.

Six months on, we have adapted to my illness. I meditate every day, do yoga and swim in the sea where we live in East Sussex. I am getting used to having one breast smaller than the other. I have learned to love my body again - to understand why it got ill. Paul chops up carrots and broccoli for the fresh juices we both drink to boost our immune systems. We've cut out wheat, dairy and meat, and eat more pulses and beans. Yes, we fart more, but we live by the sea, so the smell doesn't linger.

My sister put us in touch with an inspirational woman called Dr Rosy Daniel, who is a former director of the Bristol Cancer Centre, and who gave us hope and a focus when conventional medicine seemed to offer only more airless hospital rooms.

Paul travels with me to London for acupuncture; for spiritual healing with Ken Hetherington; for visits to the equally vibrant Dr Sosie Kassab at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.

We are even learning Johrei together, a Japanese energy medicine that is being studied at Imperial College because of the influence it has on the immune system.

We both feel healthier than we have for years. Rather than raging against fate, we have decided to see what's happening to us as part of a spiritual journey.

Maybe one of the reasons that I am feeling so healthy is that, after meeting an appalling and callous doctor (or was he a robot? - he didn't look us in the eye so it was hard to tell) at the Royal Marsden Hospital, I decided to turn down chemotherapy. This is a personal choice. I'm giving my body a chance to get back into balance, rather than subject it to more chemicals.

I don't think it's useful to carry on being angry about what has happened.

Yes, if I had been seen by the GP rather than twice shunted off to a disinterested nurse, the doctor might have picked up on the stress I was feeling as I embarked on IVF (stress is thought to be related to cancer).

Yes, if the surgeon had listened to my instinctive fears, perhaps I could have been given a six-month follow-up, which might have picked up the tumour earlier.

Yes, if the surgeon had been more enlightened, I might have been given dietary advice. Yes, if the IVF doctors had shown half as much zeal in checking breast tissue for oestrogen overstimulation as they did my ovaries, then perhaps it would have been picked up earlier. Yes if ...

Cancer is not always a death sentence - it's a disease. A horrible one, but one that people do often recover from. Scientists, particularly in the new field of mind/body medicine known as psychoneuroimmunology, are finding that emotions can help create chemical changes in the body. And because breast cancer is often found early enough, it is possible to survive.

I guess this is my message to any woman reading this who is diagnosed with the disease.

You are still alive - so live.

Embrace life. Stop worrying about trivial things. Forgive the people who used to annoy you; let the people you love know how much they mean to you - and believe that you can get better. Lots of women do.

Be strong about the treatment choices you make - you probably know more about your body than you think.

Often more than doctors.

It's time that doctors and surgeons are made more aware of breast cancer.

More aware that, as women, we live with the cycles of our bodies, month in, month out - and that, just maybe, we might be right.

So listen to us. Please.

Because until we change that arrogance, more women like me will suffer needlessly.

A full-length version of this article appears in Pink Ribbon magazine, on sale now: pounds 1 for each purchase will go to British breast cancer charities.

Copyright 2002
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