The Cortisol Diaries

How do you truly accept that you are going to die? When I was first given the diagnosis, in what feels like the start of a second life, I found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything other than cancer and death. It felt like I was having an existential crisis. I was getting by minute by minute, hour by hour, and my mind felt like it was melting as I tried to contemplate the unfathomable. The bleak statistics were constantly going around my head. Less than 10% of people in my position live more than 5 years. The most (and only really proven) effective treatment has about a 30% chance of being effective at keeping the disease stable. Even with it, median life span is about 18 months. With everything else going on - a constant stream of hospital appointments, telling people what was happening, and dealing with the fallout in other parts of my life - it was a lot to get my head around. But I was treating it like a death sentence, and started reading what I could about termina...

The view I'm stuck with from my flat It seems we all have an interesting few months ahead.  Three weeks ago, after a pretty miserable few weeks in the UK, I decided to get away. Partly because I wanted to try and have a break from the routine of hospital appointments and give myself some space to breathe from everything going on here but mostly because I love travelling and seeing the world. Just seven days ago I was in a bar in Medellín, Colombia. Knocking back shots of their evil spirit, aguardiente; dancing non-ironically to reggaeton; and generally having a great time. The dark clouds of coronavirus were looming heavily overhead, making all the foreigners pretty nervous about travel plans, but in that moment life felt normal. Arriving at Gatwick on Tuesday, into what is the worst global crisis we’ve had for decades, it really felt like stepping down from the plane into a dystopian future.  The current situation will affect people in different ways. For som...