How to live well with cancer
Psychiatrist Anne-marie O’dwyer has written a book that aims to help people deal with a cancer diagnosis and after
When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, the physical impact of what this life-changing news means looms large. Cancer a ects the body but it also lays siege to your mental well-being, as patients face a myriad of emotions, ranging from disbelief and denial, to anger, sadness, fear and grief. Professor Anne-marie O’dwyer has decades of experience working with people living with cancer. The consultant physician-psychiatrist, who is a clinical professor at Trinity College Dublin, hopes that her new book, The Cancer Guide, will help patients on their journey with the disease and dispel the misinformation and myths about cancer that currently exist.
“So many of the people I saw said to me, ‘If only I’d known. If only I had known that it would be like this; if only I had known that’ – actually, it’s normal to feel completely exhausted and wrecked,” says O’dwyer. Based on her work, she notes the signi cant time that people run into di culties is when they have nished their treatment. “So many people would have big red letters around the last day of chemotherapy in six months’ time, and their families, friends, everybody, would be delighted. Then, when they get there, they are usually completely exhausted, demoralised, frightened and all of those things. That’s what people say– if I had known it was going to be like that, I wouldn’t have had such a huge fall in my response then because it was not like what I expected.”
The book can be regarded as essential reading, not only for those living with cancer, but also their families and friends. The Cancer Guide takes the reader through various stages including getting a diagnosis, moving to cancer treatment, life after cancer, cancer and other people, and cancer and dying, with the author acknowledging in the book that this was the hardest section to write. Interspersed with chapters on topics such as intimacy and body image, and managing social situations, are anonymised stories from patients that provide a valuable insight to feelings that patients have, and reactions they may experience.
“Most of us, when we’re confronted with a threat, we feel anxious and afraid or terri ed, and we want to run away and hide from it as quickly as we can. So for many people, that’s the response they have,” says O’dwyer, who also says that in 2024, there have never been better results for cancer. “We’re picking it up early, the treatments are excellent, there’s new treatments coming on all the time, so people are living longer,” she says. “But the impact of cancer has a psychological aspect that really takes a toll. That in turn is partly based on the way the person manages their life, but also to a huge extent, I believe, it is driven by their beliefs about cancer, and these are sometimes very hard to tease out.”
The words we use about cancer are very important, says O’dwyer, who doesn’t like to use words like ‘battle’ or ‘ ght’.
“People are just trying to survive. They’re trying to get through their treatment; they’re turning up for chemotherapy every week, trudging into hospital and having their bloods done,” she says. “There’s a lot of having to be patient and having to live by other people’s deadlines, which is very di cult for people who have been completely independent, making their plans or whatever they’re doing. Then, suddenly they get hit by the bus that is cancer, and their whole life gets thrown up into the air and they’re waiting to see where it’s going to land.”