Cancer
Would my scan results be a death sentence?
At the desk I gave my name and showed my Covid vaccination pass and the woman told me to take…
Compassion and a gift for friendship are touchingly evident in Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days
It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…
The downfall of the French middle class
The chesty Corsican taxi driver was giving me his earnest appraisal of the way things were headed in France politically.…
I rather enjoy my chemotherapy sessions
With a French health card everything is free for us cancer patients, even taxis to and from the hospital. ‘This…
Was I the picture of evil incarnate?
Not long after Catriona and I first met, her husband painted my head and shoulders portrait in oils as I…
The art of losing your hair
Although fatigued to the point of catatonia, and sitting there like a 19th-century Fang funeral mask, I am glad to…
Is the daily drip of Covid statistics still helpful?
It is hard to remember a time when the daily drip of Covid statistics was not part of our lives.…
‘Protect the NHS’ is all very well, but when will the NHS protect us?
After refusing to issue my HRT without a blood pressure test, the GP surgery rang to offer me an appointment.…
My best Duke of Edinburgh salute for my oncologist
In the waiting room I thought about the Duke of Edinburgh. In particular, I pictured him saluting the cenotaph on…
Why I need to become a French citizen
After weeks of living in the 18th century, going everywhere on foot and encountering few other souls, I drove to…
Bad news from my oncologist didn’t spoil my joyous reunion with my grandson
The Moulinards had inhabited the old stone hilltop house for centuries, ekeing out a hard living among the sun-baked boulders.…
I’ve never seen a film like it: Ordinary Love reviewed
Ordinary Love stars Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson as a long-married couple whose lives are disrupted when she is diagnosed…
![Friedrich Nietzche [Photo: Roger-Viollet/Shutterstock]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/26Octlowlife.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The divine comedy of Friedrich Nietzsche
I’ve come back to the empty house for the second time in the six weeks since my mother died. The…
Compassion fatigue is as damaging to a doctor’s health as to a patient’s
Medical training is a process of toughening up: take iron that’s vulnerable to rust, add carbon and make steel. That’s…
The mysterious ways of the French
These new tablets that will save or at least prolong my life have unpredictable side effects which only now, a…
Do I have cancer in my left eye?
My luck had to run out one of these fine days. Everybody’s does sooner or later. I’ve had a fantastic…
My oncologist is a shining goddess
The weather forecast was rain, torrential, all day, so I took my anorak. In the hospital car park it was…
Proton therapy: Cancer revolution or costly white elephant?
It’s Asco week in Chicago: the biggest meeting of clinical oncologists in the world. McCormick Place convention centre, the largest…
Cancer? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world
Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my…
On giving and taking offence
‘Slight prick,’ she said. The nurses all say that before they slide the needle in the upstanding vein in the…
Has Provence cured my cancer?
During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets…
Despite her inability to talk or swallow, Genevieve Fox brims with joie de vivre
A good, solid life-threatening illness can be the making of a writer. This has certainly been the case for Genevieve…
Why talking about death is a essential part of living
Mandy was 38 when she was told she was ‘in the end stage’, suffering from COPD and finding it more…
My manhood is hanging in the balance
We cleared the kitchen table for a game of pick-up sticks. Remember them? Thirty long, thin bamboo sticks, their differing…
A Feelgood fairy story
When I wrote for the NME as a schoolgirl in the 1980s, it was recognised that there were musicians who…
