Extracted from the Preface
In April 1996 I was diagnosed with a brain tumour. This was to be the beginning of six years of sickness and uncertainty. It all started just three weeks before my eighteenth birthday.
It’s only natural that most of us should take life for granted, but when you find yourself in a situation where this is simply not possible, you begin inevitably to change your perspectives, because cancer is a life-altering experience.
Simply feeling grateful to be alive, I wanted to express this by doing something to help others in a similar situation. So, I decided to publish a book of poems and donate the profits to charity. This seemed an appropriate option to me because a poem can reveal so much that words ordinarily cannot say, and I hope that what you read will give you some insight into the world of fighting to survive and how it is perceived by the patient and those close to them.