Presenting my cancer diary
DEAR CANCER, LOVE VICTORIA: A Mum’s Diary Of Hope by Victoria Derbyshire Trapeze, £18.99
IN August 2015 much-loved BBC journalist and presenter Victoria Derbyshire revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer aged 46. But rather than battling the disease privately, she was determined to be open about her illness.
Two months after her diagnosis, she underwent a mastectomy. She filmed a video diary from her hospital bed, showing her bandaged chest just hours after the operation. The film was uploaded to YouTube and garnered more than 50,000 views.
Over the next few months, viewers from around the world followed her video diaries as she underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy and spoke candidly about everything from her mastectomy scar to wearing a wig.
Now Victoria has published a book based on the private diary she wrote during the difficult months between her diagnosis and the last day of her treatment. Written with characteristic honesty, it gives readers an unprecedented insight into Victoria’s private life, including emails and messages between her and her loved ones.
Victoria’s story begins, as many people’s cancer battles do nowadays, with her anxiously searching her symptoms online. “I instantly stop reading. BREAST CANCER. At this moment, right now, in the early hours of this Monday morning, there is a profound shift in my life,” she writes.
As the week progresses and Victoria’s fears are confirmed, she experiences a rollercoaster of emotions. At times she is stoic and pragmatic, but at others she feels vulnerable and lost for words. “I begin to cry. The tears are in charge, not me. And when they come I say pathetically, ‘I don’t want to have breast cancer’.”
True to her long career as a journalist, Victoria is informative and matter of fact when she describes the treatment, from the chemotherapy needle causing “a slight cooling sensation on the top of my hand” to the cooling cap worn to reduce hair loss: “heavier than you’d imagine, and ugly, and it feels as though it’s made of the same rubbery fabric as a wetsuit.”
Her diary is effectively a step-by-step guide to what to expect if you’re diagnosed with cancer, something one in two Britons will experience at some stage of their lives. Victoria’s descriptions cut through the shroud of dread which usually surrounds cancer treatment and make each step feel more manageable.
She also reveals the devastating sadness of having cancer as a mother. Shortly after her diagnosis, she writes letters to tell her sons Oliver and Joe that she loves them: “I silently weep as I seal both letters in envelopes and put them in my bedside drawer.”
But in other entries she finds a sliver of humour to cut through the sadness, such as the sight of her wig sat on “what appears to be a severed head” (it was a wig stand) on her dressing table, startling her partner Mark.
Victoria is exactly the type of friend everyone would want by their side after being diagnosed with cancer. Although her story is at times heartbreaking, it is also frank, funny and succeeds in demystifying an illness often discussed in hushed tones.
Following several weeks of chemotherapy and 30 consecutive days of radiotherapy, the diary ends on the last day of her treatment. As she explains in a short epilogue written two years later, she has a five per cent chance of the cancer returning but rarely thinks about it and focuses on living life to the full.
There are occasions when Victoria’s story will feel alien to the average reader. For example, when confronted with a long wait for an NHS appointment, she books one with a top Harley Street physician and pays with her credit card. But these pale in comparison to the courage and selflessness she shows in sharing her story.