Write a detailed comment on Cancer.

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Write a detailed comment on Cancer

It may seem a little odd to have chosen Ruth Picardie’s book, “Before I Say Goodbye”, for

holiday reading, and I have to admit I had to hide in the hand luggage before my husband

saw me buying it at Stansted Airport. He doesn’t like me reading about cancer, you see.

And even I might have felt it a little voyeuristic had it not been for the fact that I, too, am a

member of the Big C Club.

 

Ruth Picardie was a journalist who was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the birth

of her adored twins, when she was in her early 30s. She chronicled her condition in a

column in The Observer, and these pieces are reproduced in this book, as is her most

intimate correspondence, mostly by email, with her friends.

 

 

As I could so easily have been fobbed off by my (woman) GP – “I’m 90% sure it’s nothing.

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Come back in two weeks if it’s still there.” – it is impossible to read a story like Ruth’s

without it being too horribly close for comfort. I had breathed a premature sigh of relief, and

said “Oh, good. What makes you say that?” “Well, a tumour would be hard and irregular.” I

went home. Felt pretty hard and irregular to me. So I, who am very nonchalant about my

own health and actually had initially doubted whether I could feel anything at all, went back.

And insisted.

 

The consultant hardly needed to ...

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