Incurable cancer

Sophie Sabbage The Cancer Whisperer gets half a page in The Observer for her rejection of the idea of 'battling cancer', as if it was a new idea. Her mother was horrified that she was writing a book about her own experience, culling entries from her blog.

In the Macmillan Online Community's Living with Incurable Cancer Forum (on which I post occasionally) there's a tendency for people to write of their cancer in adversarial terms, which is surely unhelpful since it must raise their stress levels without alleviating their symptoms. If they already lead a healthy life there may not be anything they can do that would affect the course of their disease; the NHS doesn't offer alternative or complementary treatment for cancer http://bit.ly/1PA393W.

But I do think its useful to post experience on line, and all the stuff about the myelofibrosis since I was diagnosed in July 2011 is on this blog. I'm not 'allergic to death' as many people are according to Sophie, though it probably isn't a good subject for dinner table conversation. There are practical questions that do need to be answered in many families such as who gets which bits of furniture, books, pictures etc, and what are the ingredients of the funeral or memorial event. The fun idea of having a sweepstake on the date of my death was vetoed by Lindsay as in bad taste, but for the record I've always said it would be in or about July 2016. Quality of life is more important than quantity, and by that time if I'm still around the quality may be somewhat reduced.

So far the disease hasn't taken over my whole existence and the posts about it have been factual. Continuing to work on politics prevents me from indulging in hadiwist