Don Moulden and his wife, Jean, were shocked to the core when they were handed a pack of leaflets by a nurse at their local hospital in Hertfordshire. Don is able to joke about it today, but at the time he and Jean were devastated. “There was good news, and...

Malcolm Oliver was sitting in hospital in Tunbridge Wells when his mobile rang. “Don’t have the op. I have some great news for you,” came the voice from his cousin. Angela Frier, the former managing director of ITN International, had been doing her own research about the Barrett’s Oesophagus that...

This is Misha Lynn, a 43-year old Special Needs teacher from Dunoon in Scotland. She looks happy enough, albeit slightly apprehensive, waiting for the injection of the Foscan drug that would make her light sensitive and ready for the light treatment that would destroy her basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Her...

If Beverley Moy’s local GP and hospital consultants in Preston and Manchester had had their way, she would now be missing part of her nose and cheek, while the tear duct on her right eye would permanently leak down her face. Two years ago she had been diagnosed with having...

Over her life Louise Longman has had more than enough ‘specialists’ poking and prodding her, telling her that the vascular lesion – a collection of blood vessels and fibrous veins – in her left arm would be cured by this or that new treatment. At the age of six the...

When 73-year old Bill Lee marched himself in to see the consultant to receive the test results on a possible cancer scare, he knew one things for sure. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to face the surgeon’s knife either, and had already come to the very real...

John Switters is pretty savvy about the health world. As one of the British Red Cross Emergency Planning Officers for London, he led the capital’s team responding to the London bombings in 2005. He’s trained to deal with any possible emergency. Despite all of his experience, he admits to it...

Twelve years ago I was in a really bad way. I had had surgery some months before in my local hospital for a small cancer of the mouth, followed by intensive radiotherapy. So the entire left side of my mouth and neck was actively compromised. There was then a lot...

Composer, Brian Elias, talks for the first time about his brush with cancer, and demands to know why, 18 years after his successful treatment with his chosen therapy, it is still not being offered to patients across the whole NHS. “When my surgeon, Colin Hopper, invited me into his treatment...

Kim Wuyts from Worthing in Sussex, found her world turned on its head four years ago when she was told that she had skin cancer on her nose. To realise that a small area of flaking white cells on her nose was so serious, was a real blow...