Did this picture of Jennifer Saunders smoking shock you?

I ought to raise a cheer and maybe a glass this afternoon if I have passed the five-year mark securely, but I’ve seen the statistics and I know that in numerous situations cancer can come back. There is often the probability of yet another breast tumour, or what they contact “secondaries”, when a cancer reappears someplace else. I am often quite conscious of that probability and try to accept it calmly.

I am constantly conscious, too, of cancer stories and adhere to the progress of other men and women who had cancer close to the same time as me. Jennifer Saunders is 1 of people men and women. I am interested in her thoughts since she condemns the use of phrases like “fight, battle, victim and victory” when speaking of her illness, just as I do.

But she was also keen to see cancer as anything you can deal with and leave behind. Last weekend I saw a daring photograph of her in the papers: elegant, glowing – and smoking in the street.

I stared at it for a long time. I was shocked. Just as I am shocked each time I go to the Marsden, or any other hospital, and see sufferers crowded round the doors smoking.

Was she making a defiant gesture? Thumbing her nose at cancer? Thumbing her nose at the paparazzi? What ever the reason, it would be totally wrong to condemn her. But like numerous whose life has been touched with cancer, I can’t share what some would get in touch with her breathtaking self-assurance others, probably, defiance.

But then how 1 discounts with cancer – and lifestyle with it and beyond it – usually polarises view. It was uncovered 4 many years in the past that Mo Mowlam had stored her malignant brain tumour a secret, for fear the news would see her eliminated from Tony Blair’s Cabinet in a wave of misdirected sympathy. Some criticised the late Northern Ireland Secretary for allowing herself to continue in such a heavy-bodyweight and delicate work when her personality – and indeed the peace method – could have been impacted by her treatment. I sympathised completely with Mo, who wanted to go on residing her lifestyle as normal, as I do – to an extent – with Jennifer Saunders right now.

Britain has changed a great deal in the 5 years considering that I grew to become a cancer patient. Faced with the large expense of the NHS in a time of austerity, we are all fearful of turning into dangerously ill, and there not getting ample money left in the NHS coffers to conserve us. We are frightened and anxious and prepared to point a finger at men and women for their private foibles.

Smoking, consuming, over-eating, they all include to cancer risks, heart attack hazards, diabetic choices. It is as well straightforward to blame individuals and not the stressful lives that have brought on so a lot of to resort to alcohol, comfort meals and cigarettes.

Saunders appears eager to mark her cancer as some thing that is more than and completed with. An irritation in her existence. Not really considerable. “It happens to tons of men and women,” she says. And sadly she’s appropriate.

But she also seems to see it as one thing you can deal with and move on from. I admire her power, but I cannot emulate it. I would find it hard to say: “I when had cancer.” I regard it as much closer than that. It’s some thing I reside with each day. It is even now portion of me.

As indeed are my own weaknesses. I blush when I think back to the surgeon’s very first letter about me to my GP. “Ms McDougall says she has constantly been healthy, but she is obese.”

Properly, I nonetheless am, I guess. I have no proper to condemn Jennifer Saunders for smoking, no matter what her reason. Only the non-smoking teetotaller with a body mass index under 25 must dare to do otherwise.

But like many survivors, blessed with a second chance, I shall be erring on the side of caution.

——-

No, says Cindy Blake. Give the female a well-deserved break – she’s just attempting to resume a standard daily life

_{Dealing with it her way: Kylie Minogue}

Jennifer Saunders smoking a cigarette was bound to result in an uproar: how can a cancer survivor put her well being at danger in this kind of a blatant way? Soon after all she’s been by way of, and particularly as she is a public figure, shouldn’t she care more about her health, as nicely as set an example for every person? Smoking’s undesirable sufficient: to smoke when you’ve skilled cancer yourself is just plain crazy.

Possessing had breast cancer, I understand the appalled reactions. And but as far as I’m concerned, Saunders has every proper to have a cigarette if she would like 1. It doesn’t offend me that she smokes – and I can sympathise with why she may well want to.

When I was initial diagnosed with the condition ten years ago, I wasn’t shocked. Each my sisters had had it in all probability, I had one of the cancer-generating BRCA genes as well. But if I wasn’t stunned, I was positive as hell terrified – and each subsequent step in the approach of treatment method ratchets up the terror element. A mastectomy is no enjoyable. Chemo is appalling, radiotherapy gruesome. Throughout it all, you see other folks with that very same scared look, that very same need to hang on to time, to live.

Had I seen that photo for the duration of my remedy, I would have doubtless been scandalised and angry. How dare she play around with her wellness when other people have been so desperately making an attempt to hold theirs? I surely don’t forget feeling furious in direction of folks who took their personal lives. That type of wilful throwing away of anything so valuable was to me, at that level, a heinous crime towards all the innocent sufferers.

I remember, too, standing in front of the mirror with my omnipresent hat on (I refused to appear at my bald head) and seeing, on the side of the sink, a pot of wrinkle-minimizing cream. Chucking it away, I vowed never to use any merchandise like that once more. All I wished was to be permitted to grow old, to have these wrinkles.

I was sure that if I survived, my entire attitude to life would adjust. I’d be like Scrooge on Christmas morning, savouring every minute, spreading cheer, buying 35lb turkeys for random Bob Cratchits. I’d consume much more healthily, drink significantly less, workout more and, above all, I would in no way have to be frightened once again.

But one of the intriguing factors of a cancer diagnosis is what occurs when you survive it. I’d had a sort of clarity during chemo that is challenging to describe – except to say that I ultimately felt I understood what was critical in daily life. Actual existence, nevertheless, snuck back in. I started contemplating about the mundanities once again: funds, perform, supermarket journeys. As my hair grew back, so did my vanity. Inevitably, about two years on, I bought an additional pot of wrinkle cream.

10 many years on and I’ve stopped eating entirely organically, I’ve gone back to my standard consumption of wine and I have no compunction in sun-bathing. I know it could give me skin cancer, but I do it anyway. Maybe it is not as egregious as smoking a cigarette, but it’s nonetheless not a fantastic decision.

The point for me was that I wasn’t in a position to modify my lifestyle around totally. I wasn’t going to be a fount of wisdom and goodness and purity I had to fail to remember getting a saintly transformed Scrooge and begin residing normally. If I had continued to obsess about cancer, not only would I have bored all my pals and household, I wouldn’t have been ready to do considerably at all. I’d be freaking out about drinking water from plastic bottles, eating any kind of pork, sporting the incorrect type of bra – the checklist of feasible carcinogenics is countless. I once went to a seminar named “Cancer With out Fear” and came out quaking with terror. Nothing is risk-free.

So, right now, each time any person with cancer calls me for suggestions, I tell them to do what they really feel most comfy with. Yes, we have Angelina Jolie revealing her breast cancer therapy plans and Kylie Minogue speaking about how “cancer does not take place and go away and you are completed with it”.

But every person offers with cancer – and recovery – in her personal way, which includes these in the public eye. Jennifer Saunders is outdated enough to make her own alternatives. I doubt quite much that survivors everywhere will now make a decision to light up due to the fact she has – it is more probably that Wayne Rooney smoking a fag would influence more people.

And let’s keep in mind: drinking can give you mouth/abdomen/liver cancer, but she wouldn’t be in such problems if she’d been pictured having a glass of wine.

So give Saunders a break. She’s been through a great deal. If she feels like not getting a cancer victim for a even though, even in this kind of a stupid way, she shouldn’t be vilified.

Did this picture of Jennifer Saunders smoking shock you?