There’s one thing nobody tells you about battling cancer (Image: Humphrey Nemar/Daily Express/Robert Fisk)
Sipping on yet another powerful concoction I would wonder if I’d drunk my way through enough Zombies and if my Long Island Ice Teas were long enough. And as I pondered I’d dream of a day when I would make it to Long Island in the States to have the original, rather than something scraped together by a man following a card in .
‘Drink more cocktails’ was a New Year’s resolution I would include on my list of 100 every year, because to me going somewhere for cocktails was a sign of fun times. Plus, crucially, by saying “more” rather than having a specific target, it was something I could try to do throughout the year rather than being upset at failing by the end of January, like so many other people who set resolutions.
I was always less successful with my plan to do at least one parkrun a month, mainly because getting out of bed before 9am on a Saturday was a tough endeavour for me.
But now, as people work through their ‘New Year, new me’ plans for 2025 I can see just how much cancer has destroyed the resolutions I used to make to try and ensure my years were packed full of fun.
I stopped drinking back in August 2023 to ensure my liver could focus on its job of breaking down the chemotherapy drugs, and running doesn’t happen these days due to my massive hernia.
And other resolutions like ‘buy a suit’ are a bit redundant at the moment because when I do work these days I work from home so should probably change it to ‘look less like you’ve just fallen out of bed and have been dragged backwards through a bush’.
So instead of resolutions for 2025 I just have one goal and that’s to help as many people with mental health issues as possible.
This is why I’ve started the Care campaign at the Daily Express, to try and do everything I can to improve the support that cancer patients receive for mental health problems both during and after treatment.
The official statistic is that one in two people will be affected by cancer in their lifetime. But I think it’s truer to say that everyone will be affected by cancer in their lifetime because it doesn’t just affect the patient, it also affects their family and friends.
It’s the reason a lot of people won’t live to see their granddaughter walk down the aisle.
It’s the reason a lot of people can’t do the job they used to enjoy, and then can’t afford to pay for the holiday they want to go on.
It’s the reason why a lot of lives are cut short way before they have reached their potential and worked out what life is supposed to be about.
And it’s about the guilt of knowing that the reason your family and friends are fearful of the future is because you have cancer.
Dealing with the emotional impact of issues like these, and countless others, is the hardest battle for most cancer patients.
But it’s the one their medical teams often forget about as they are so focused on the physical aspects that can be plotted on a graph, like blood test results and CT scans.
At the Daily Express we are calling on these medics to start recognising the impact on a patient’s mental by asking them how they are feeling at the consultation they have before treatment. They can then refer patients to support groups, counsellors, and other specialists as required.
Doing this will help the patients live much happier lives, which sadly may not be packed full of parkruns and cocktails, and will equip them with the tools to deal with whatever 2025 throws at them.