I am not afraid, declares Jowell as she confronts terminal cancer
Baroness calls for patients to be free to take the risk of undergoing innovative treatments on the NHS
BARONESS JOWELL has said she does not fear death in an interview about her terminal brain cancer and called for more investment to find a cure.
The former Labour cabinet minister said she was “absolutely 100 per cent” focused on staying alive, and quoted Seamus Heaney, the late Irish poet, as she told BBC radio listeners: “I am not afraid.”
Lady Jowell is due to deliver a speech in the House of Lords on making new cancer treatments available through the National Health Service.
In May last year, on her 70th birthday, Lady Jowell announced she had been diagnosed with a high-grade brain tumour known as glioblastoma.
Lady Jowell occasionally stumbled over her words – and explained that “the tumour bloody well does this to you” – during the interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. When asked whether she would rather stay at home on the sofa than take her fight to the House of Lords, the peer said that would be “absolutely impossible”. She said: “I have so much love in my family, my children, my close friends, it’s the most extraordinary, blessed and recreating sense and I feel that I want that to be experienced by so many other people as well.
“I was deeply touched by Seamus Heaney’s last words, when he said: ‘Do not be afraid’. I am not afraid. I feel very clear about my sense of purpose, and what I want to do, and how do I know how long [my life is] going to last? I’m certainly going to do whatever I can to make sure it lasts a very long time.” Lady Jowell has said that 2,500 people have written her “the most wonderful letters”. She used the interview to call for cancer patients to be free to take the risk of undergoing different, innovative treatments on the NHS.
Lady Jowell said: “Shall I tell you something? I am absolutely 100 per cent trying to stay alive. That is exactly the kind of risk that patients should be free to take. It should be a risk that they have the chance to take and it’s certainly
‘How do I know how long [my life] is going to last? I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure it lasts a long time’
what somebody like me wants.” Lady Jowell has been treated in London on the NHS but had advice from the US and consulted a doctor in Germany. “It got to the point in the NHS in London where I couldn’t be given any more treatment but it was very clear that if I went to Germany then I had a chance of taking out this immunotherapy, a new experiment.”
As Tessa Jowell, Lady Jowell was one of Labour’s best known faces during the Tony Blair era.
Her interview drew tributes in the Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions. John Bercow, the Speaker, said: “In my 20 years in this place, I have never met a more courteous, more gracious member of Parliament.”