‘I have terminal cancer and love my life’
For most people, a deadly prognosis would be crushing. But Lisa Keech has been revelling in a new freedom, she tells Victoria Lambert
Imagine being told you have 10 months to live. The idea that such a death sentence could be anything other than devastating – let alone a harbinger of joy – will be anathema to most. But for 50-year-old Lisa Keech, it has proved a “complete blessing” – 28 months since she learned her breast cancer was terminal, she has not only beaten her prognosis, but is happier than she has ever been, she insists, her blue eyes brimming with wisdom.
“You can get everything lined up. It sorts out your priorities. In the past two years, I have had the opportunity to really, really live. I think that is the blessing of it. I spend time with who I want and say what I need to. I have planned the way I want to end my days. I have been privileged to get the chance to look ahead while cherishing the now. What a gift.”
It is one she is keen to share. To that end, she has taken part in a new documentary, A Time to Live, along with 11 other remarkable contributors who, in coming to terms with the knowledge that they are dying, have learnt much to teach the living.
If it sounds an unbearably grim watch, it is anything but. Lisa’s fellow end-of-lifers all echo her life-affirming resilience – from 45-year-old Louise, prepping her 13-year-old son for life without her by sending him on a “sabbatical” to live with her sister, to Annabel, 56, who left her husband of 28 years to spend her remaining time as an “outrageous, naughty, older woman”.
The programme is the brainchild of award-winning documentary maker Sue Bourne, whose last film explored modern-day isolation in The Age of
Loneliness. Bourne, who has been through breast cancer herself, and lost a friend to the disease, says she wanted to find a template for coping with terminal illness in a positive way; in Lisa, she found an exemplar.
But Telegraph readers may already be familiar with Lisa’s incredible strength: she first appeared in these pages two years ago, when we met at her home in Albury, Surrey. It’s shared with her beloved husband Victor, a 50-year-old IT project manager, and the couple’s twin 18-year-old daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, who are about to sit their A-levels.
At the time, Lisa, who was a project manager, had accepted she was running out of options, having already fought her disease for three years.
Her cancer was, unusually, two-fold: in July 2012 she had found, in her right breast, an oestrogen-dependant tumour; in her left, a week later, a different, very aggressive type known as HER2 positive. Lisa admitted she shed a few tears at first, but quickly bucked up. ‘’I nicknamed the first one Hitler and the second one Stalin.’’
She endured six cycles of intravenous chemo called FEC-T – two types administered one after another – and suffered horrendously.
“I went to bed and didn’t move for four months. From nausea to exhaustion and hair loss, I had every side-effect going. I felt like I had been steamrollered every morning.’’
A double lumpectomy followed, and when the cancer was found to have spread into her lymph nodes, a 14-hour double mastectomy and reconstruction, before being given the all-clear in November 2014. But two months later, she found a lump on her neck; the cancer was back and had spread to her liver and lungs.
“I said to my consultant, ‘OK, it is going to kill me. But I need three years to see the girls into university; can you give me that?’ And she shook her head, and said ‘No’.’’
Unable to face further chemo, Lisa was told she had about 10 months, which with endocrine suppressants might stretch to two years, and went home to make her peace with this world.
“I just wanted a few months of relative good health to enjoy my family, see the girls get their GCSE results” – remarkably, they achieved top grades – “and put my affairs in order.”
Thanks to “very, very good life insurance” she was able to retire and fulfil various dreams, from viewing the Northern Lights to seeing Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall. And raising £45,000 for cancer research charities by hosting a huge party in the village, in the meantime.
Her oncologist reported that her tumours had shrunk, thanks to the endocrine therapy, so last summer the family took a road trip through California and Victor and Lisa followed their favourite band, The Divine Comedy, around Europe on tour. They visited the war graves of Belgium and
‘I just wanted a few months of good health to enjoy my family, see the girls get their GCSEs’
France and the bulb fields of Holland. “Anything we wanted to do, we did.”
Lisa makes it sound easy but the effects of her cancer were omnipresent. When they visited Sicily, the pain in her liver was so intense, despite morphine, that she spent hours crying.
Yet, last autumn, when she heard Sue Bourne on Woman’s Hour talking about the documentary, she says: “I emailed straight away, saying I have terminal cancer and I love my life.” Not surprisingly, Bourne accepted her on to the show without reservation.
In January this year, it became clear the endocrine suppressant was no longer working. In April, Lisa was admitted to the Royal Surrey County Hospital with her liver enlarged, unable to eat or drink, barely breathing, and taking morphine for the pain. “I was frightened,” she admits. “It’s not the dying, but the manner of dying which is upsetting.”
Her consultant, Tim Crook, persuaded her to try a new type of chemo and I have met her just after the first of 18 rounds of a new drug, Paclitaxel, which will hopefully bring far fewer side-effects. “I am not ready to die so I’d be a fool not to try it.”
She says: “The game is to stay long enough for them to find a cure, isn’t it? Things are racing along with research – I could be one of the lucky ones.”
Her optimism does not detract from any sense of resolve or realism. “These past 18 months have been as priceless as they were unexpected. I may not want to die, but I can be at peace with the idea.”
The admin is all done – “I’ve project-managed it, of course. Wills, life insurance, a funeral pack” – though she occasionally still fiddles with her plans. “We saw Rick Astley perform recently, and I added in his song Angels on My Side. I don’t want Vic or anyone else worrying about what I would have liked.”
Of course, she still has low moments: “There is a loneliness when you are in so much pain, and you feel so desperate – no one else can have that pain for you. No one knows how you feel in the middle of the night when you are really scared.
“And I have a sense of guilt – leaving my children without a mum, my husband without a wife, my parents without their only child. I know that is totally ridiculous – you don’t get cancer on purpose – but I do feel bad about it.”
In particular, Lisa hates the thought of three things: “Not being at my daughters’ weddings, or with our family at Christmas, and Vic – waking up on his own… If I allow myself to think of those things, that’s when I dissolve.” She takes a moment to gather herself. “There is no point in doing that. I want to be positive, live for today and be happy.”
But where does her infectious positivity come from? “Cancer puts everything into perspective,” she says. “In life, very few things are important. What matters is that you are with the people you love and care for, that you have a roof, you can eat, are warm and can pay your bills. That you and others are kind. Most importantly, that you are happy and loved. After that, it’s all bolt-ons.”
Moreover, she says, “If you allow thoughts of cancer to ruin the time you do have, it gets you twice over. It wins all the way down the road.”
A Time to Live is on BBC Two on Wednesday at 9pm