First, I want to thank the many people who have posted such thoughtful comments to this blog. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed, though not surprised, by people’s generosity (again and again, cancer has revealed to me the kindness of strangers as well as friends). To my embarrassment, I haven’t been able to get my login details to work, so haven’t posted replies. I will certainly reply to several people’s kind suggestions once I figure out how to do so. (BMJ help!) more…

Test results can be nerve racking. They turn a complex stream of life into a binary event in which your fate seems to hang in the balance. I was especially nervous about my latest CT results. They would reveal whether the small cancers in my head had been zapped by recent whole brain radiation. Or not. more…

I am back from purdah, having just returned from 10 days of ‘Noble Silence’ at a Vipassana meditation retreat in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. These charitable Buddhist programmes are run on a pay-by-donation basis in many countries, including Britain (in Herefordshire).  more…

Dear Reader,

I should introduce myself before launching into a blog which I hope is not too depressing: living in the shadow of death. This is my starting point, as I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (I lit up “like a Christmas tree” on the scans) in February 2007. It was not a complete surprise - I’d had primary breast cancer - not terribly high risk - in 2003. But disappointing that so much treatment hadn’t cured it. more…