Cancer: The things that
don’t make the pamphlets.

This room gathers lived experience around serious illness, treatment, recovery and caring.

It began with a series of posts I wrote in an online cancer support community during my own treatment and recovery. Some were reflective. Others were very practical: feeding tubes, medication, cognitive overload, bowel problems, recovery, family, faith and the small discoveries that made difficult days more manageable.

I originally wrote them because something I had learned might help someone else going through the same thing.

This room gives the most useful of those posts a more permanent home. It also gives me somewhere to return to them with the benefit of time, add what I have learned since, and continue writing while my own experience is still unfolding.

And it is not only for patients. Serious illness happens to one body, but it affects partners, families, friends and carers too. Their experience belongs in this conversation.

Cancer is part of my story. It is not the whole story.

The wider subject here is how we live through serious illness without allowing illness to become our entire identity.

This is lived experience, not medical advice, and should not replace guidance from qualified health professionals.