‘She was radiant, way out of my league’: a story of love and mental illness

In 2009, Mark Lukach came home from his teaching job in San Francisco to find his wife, Giulia, sitting on the carpet, their dog sprawled next to her. He could instantly sense that something was wrong. Then Giulia looked up at him and said: “I can’t figure out what I’m going to do with the Vespa key.”

The couple had a Vespa scooter but Mark didn’t understand. “What do you mean? What would you have to do with the Vespa key?”

“I mean, when I drive to the Golden Gate Bridge,” Giulia replied, “I’ll probably take the Vespa. When I park it, what should I do with the key? If I leave it in the scooter for you, someone will probably steal the scooter. But if I bring it with me, and they don’t find my body after I jump, you’ll lose the only key we have to the scooter.” She looked at Mark pleadingly. “What am I supposed to do with the Vespa key?”

Mark and Giulia met at Georgetown University, Washington DC, in August 2000 when they were just 18. In his book, My Lovely Wife: A Memoir of Madness and Hope, Mark describes the first moment he saw Giulia. It was a coup de foudre: “She was radiant, way out of my league, but I was fearless and almost immediately in love.”

Mark and his wife, Giulia.

Giulia was highly ambitious and knew exactly how her life was going to pan out: she was going to be a marketing director with three children by the time she was 35. Mark was more laid-back but also knew what he wanted to be: a husband, a surfer and the father of lots of children with Giulia.

Those plans seem a long way away now. Giulia turned 35 earlier this year but her life is nothing like she had anticipated. Her ambitions have shrunk to accommodate her new identity: that of, in her own words, an “ongoing psychotic”.

In 2009, at 27, Giulia had a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break. Hospitalised in a psychiatric ward, she was tormented by delusions and paranoia. When she was released almost a month later, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had sunk into an extended suicidal depression during which Mark, struggling to support Giulia, exhausted himself trying to keep his wife safe, follow doctor’s orders, while keeping the job on which the family’s health insurance now relied.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered and the couple had a son. But soon after he was born, Giulia had another breakdown and was diagnosed as bipolar. She had her third episode a few years later: in 2014. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, the couple’s golden present and glittering future, which they had taken for granted, was transforming into a harrowing reality.

It has been two and a half years since Giulia’s last episode but although she is on daily medication and has a team of psychiatrists and therapists fighting to preserve her delicate mental health, she and Mark know that it is improbable that she will fully recover. The family have to be on permanent alert in case she sinks into psychosis again.

“It’s just so crazy what happens to you in the psych ward that you just don’t want to live afterwards,” says Giulia. “Each time, I have had to start over with my job, and put on hold plans to get pregnant again. Hospitalisation disrupts everything and you have to start from scratch. If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I have the strength to do that one more time.”

Mark is silent. I ask how hearing that makes him feel. “It’s terrifying to hear but I’m not surprised,” he eventually says quietly. “I have seen three times how hard it is for Giulia to process these breaks. I do worry that she’s been able to process three but how about the fourth, fifth, sixth and so on? If you keep breaking your arm in the same place, your arm gets weaker and weaker. The same applies to your mind. I have a lot of admiration for her strength but can’t help having that nagging worry that she will not be able to keep recovering.”

My Lovely Wife is not Giulia’s story but Mark’s. It is the compassionate and deeply honest account of how a husband copes when he is forced to become the carer for an ongoing psychotic wife, a young son (he will be five next week), while being his family’s main breadwinner.

“My greatest sadness is that at times, I wasn’t strong enough to be a father to my son and I had to let him down, or take him to stay with his grandparents,” Mark says. “I never thought that would be a consequence of being a carer. It still brings me to tears when I talk about it.”

Mark wrote the book to fill the void he discovered when, battling to get through his trauma, isolation and despair, he searched for support. “I couldn’t find any voices out there speaking to my experience,” he says. “I learned a lot about her and her symptoms and diagnoses, but there was nothing for me. No resources at all.

“An example of the lack of support is that the maximum my health insurance would offer me was one 30-minute session once a month. I was appalled. What was I supposed to do? Who was listening to me? It felt like I was the first one going through this, which is obviously not the case. The message was that the healthy one is not supposed to need help. I was supposed to be fine. I was on my own.”

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Mark’s Ted talk about Giulia.

Mark also had to readjust his idea of what a relationship was. “I have a really strong belief that relationships should be equal: that the effort one person puts in, needs to be balanced by an equal amount of effort being put in by the other partner. But I do so much caring for Giulia when she’s sick that that reciprocity becomes imbalanced.”

Mark admits his expectations led to a lot of tension after Giulia’s first episode. “It was like he was seeking retribution from me for my having got sick,” she says.

Mark admits this is true: “My expectations after the first episode were that she should ‘pay me back’ for the extra caring I put in when she was ill,” he says. “It created a lot of tension. Our marriage hit a very rocky patch partly because of that.”

It’s different now, Mark says. “It’s not that I do X for her, so she has to do X for me. Now it’s that we have to care for each other as much as we can at any given moment, and I’ve accepted that for periods of time, Giulia isn’t able to care for me or our son. That doesn’t put her in deficit.”

Nevertheless, Giulia admits she has learned a lot from reading Mark’s book. “For the first time, I was able to get into his shoes and see how awful it was: how scary it was for him, being a dad and being the best dad when his wife was in the psych ward. We’d talked about it already but reading it made me experience my illness from his perspective. The loneliness really came through,” she says.

But, ultimately, Giulia says, this book is about love. “This book is pretty much a love letter Mark has written to me,” she said, struggling to hold back the tears. “And it’s the gift that we can give to the world.”

Mark’s ultimate message to anyone who finds themselves in a situation that resembles his own is clear. “Without a doubt, you have to take care of yourself as a carer,” he says. “My first impulse was to put absolutely everything into trying to help Giulia and not pay attention to my needs at all.

“I felt that doing anything for myself was selfish and not good for Giulia. But I’ve learned that that’s how carers burn out, and then they’re no good to anyone,” he says. “So now, I continue to prioritise being active and being the best teacher and writer I can be, despite Giulia’s mental health.

“We’ve said we don’t want her to have another episode but have had to prepare ourselves for one, and this is part of that process,” he adds. “Keeping myself at the top of my game means that if – or, rather, when – Giulia has another episode, I will be able to be the best husband and best father I’m able to be for us all.”

• My Lovely Wife: A Memoir of Madness and Hope is published by Macmillan, £16.99. To order a copy for £14.44, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

‘She was radiant, way out of my league’: a story of love and mental illness

Wellcome science book prize goes to story of a heart transplant

A novel that “illustrates what it is to be human” has become the first translated book to win the Wellcome prize for science writing.

Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living, which tracks the journey of a heart from donor to recipient over 24 hours, is only the second novel ever to scoop the £30,000 prize, which is awarded to a work of fiction or nonfiction that engages with health and medicine.

Announcing the winner, chair of judges Val McDermid said: “Sometimes you read a memoir and it is just one person’s tragedy, but this is about the tragedy and hope that comes from loss that could affect every single one of us.” She said the judges “felt very strongly” that the book had the potential to change the lives of readers and called it “compelling, original and ambitious”.

De Kerangal’s novel was translated from French by Jessica Moore, who was awarded £10,000. McDermid praised the translation, which she told the Guardian pulled off the difficult trick of shaping a book into a second language without undermining the intention or voice of the original.

Describing herself as a “long-time advocate” of translated fiction, McDermid, a bestselling crime writer, said: “Publishers have very slowly woken up to the importance to readers of translated fiction as a way of understanding a globalised world … The English language doesn’t have a monopoly on terrific writing and I am very happy to be one of the judges who chose this book.”

Mend the Living begins with vibrant young surfer Simon Limbeau suffering catastrophic injuries in a road traffic accident. Faced with a son who has been left brain dead, his parents are forced to decide whether to turn off his life support and donate his heart. The story then follows Limbeau’s heart on its way to a donor recipient and explores how people recover hope in tragic circumstances.

The novel, which was also longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker international prize, has also been adapted to film. Directed by Katell Quillévéré and renamed Heal the Living (Réparer les vivants), it stars Tahar Rahim, Emmanuelle Seigner and Anne Dorval and is set for a UK release at the end of April.

Mend the Living was chosen from a strong shortlist of six books that included two novels, the other being Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, about a family navigating the NHS as they come to terms with a child’s unexpected illness.

Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, which examines how the 40tn microbes in the human body affect us, was the only debut on the shortlist. The other three books interweaved science with personal experience. Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi was the first author to be in contention for the prize posthumously, with his memoir When Breath Becomes Air recounting his final months of life with terminal lung cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene blends a narrative about genetics with the story of reoccurring mental illness in his family, while David France, a gay man and an eyewitness to the Aids epidemic, wrote of the struggle faced by HIV/Aids activists during the 1980s in How to Survive a Plague.

McDermid chaired a panel of judges that mixed broadcasters and writers with scientists. Cambridge professors Simon Baron-Cohen and Tim Lewens joined the Wire in the Blood author on a panel completed by broadcaster Gemma Cairney and radio producer Di Speirs.

Wellcome science book prize goes to story of a heart transplant

Why dissecting the brain only gives us half its story | Daniel Glaser

News that a man captured and killed the UK’s rarest butterfly reminds us how much biology relies on Wordsworth’s famous line, ‘murdering to dissect’.

The obsessive collector appreciates the butterfly’s beauty by killing it and pinning it to a board. In neurobiology, historically, researchers relied on slicing up the brain to understand more about its structure. But ‘murdering to dissect’ hasn’t always given us the best picture. When Renaissance physicians examined the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain that runs to the spinal cord, they assumed – wrongly – that this liquid transmitted impulses. And when Aristotle noticed the fine network of blood vessels in the folded surface of the brain, he believed its function was as a radiator. Neither error could have persisted if they had been able to conduct live experiments.

Dissection alone led to all sorts of mistaken conclusions, which is why modern neuroscience tries as far as possible to study the brain in action. If you want to truly understand and appreciate something, be it a brain or a butterfly, better to observe it in the wild and not just pinned to a board.

Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London

Why dissecting the brain only gives us half its story | Daniel Glaser

Black women and breast cancer: share your story

Black women in England are more likely to get advanced breast cancer than white women, new analysis by Cancer Research UK and Public Health England shows.

It was concluded that late-stage disease affected almost twice as many black women (22% of black African women and 22% of black Caribbean women) than white women (13%).

Experts say this is for many reasons, including possible differences in tumour biology, low awareness of symptoms and screening and barriers to seeking help.

While spotting the disease early is key, Heather Nelson of BME Cancer Voice, said in an interview with the BBC: “Women of colour are less likely to go for screening.

“You’ll get leaflets through your door and they will be predominantly of white, middle-class women. There’s no representation of South Asian, African descent et cetera.

“If you get information like that, you’re going to look and think, ‘That’s not about me.’”

One woman said to the BBC: “A lot of us black people bury our head in the sand: ‘Oh, me, well, I don’t need to go, there’s nothing wrong with me.’”

But lots of work has taken place around breast cancer prevention. In October, the international community celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The pink ribbon has become a symbol to express moral support for women with the disease.

So, why is this work not reaching everyone? If you’re a black survivor of breast cancer, we want to hear your thoughts. When did you find out you had cancer and what has your experience been? What do you think of the prevention messages available? Does it talk to a diverse range of communities? Why do you think that black women are less likely to go for screening?

Share your story with us.

Black women and breast cancer: share your story

The story and health benefits of Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is extracted from the solid flesh of raw coconuts. Most retail coconut oil is obtained from adult coconuts, with the extraction taking place by chemical processes and then spun in a centrifuge to separate the oil from the liquid.

Virgin coconut oil is processed using a different method. It is produced by using the milk and flesh of young coconuts, with the flesh being compacted at high pressure to extract the oil. This method is more costly and time consuming, but produces oil with the most nutritional benefits and without fear of chemical contamination. Virgin coconut oil retains a lot of the taste associated with coconut flesh, whereas regular coconut oil has no taste.

Once produced, coconut oil has an extremely long shelf life. It remains fresh for up to 6 months at 24 degrees Celsius (75 f) before spoiling.

Virgin coconut oil is supplied in glass jars or liquid containers as it has a very low melting point of 24 degrees Celsius (75 f). Regular supermarket style coconut oil however contains high amounts of lauric acid, which allows it to be refined in a manner which provides a higher melting point, often around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 f). This is why regular coconut oil is often sold in solid form from an exposed mild refrigeration unit within the supermarket, alongside other solid oils, butters and margarines.

When cooking or working with coconut oil, temperatures must be kept low as the oil begins to produce smoke at around 177 degrees Celsius (350f).

Coconut oil is an extremely good source of medium chain fatty acids, more so than almost every other available oil on the market. Most of you will probably recognise this type of fat as it is commonly called today, MCT oil (with MCT meaning medium-chain triglycerides).

Although on paper the MCT oil content of coconut oil is counted directly as saturated fat without any further distinction, MCT’s actually provide the main health benefits of coconut oil.

MCT’s are the main constituent of coconut oil, and have seen a strong following recently in terms of health and supplementation. Most specific MCT oil products are extracted from coconut oil, however coconut oil itself can also be used for the same health benefits at a much lower cost.

The majority of MCT oil on the market is derived from Palm oil, due to the lower cost in production. Palm oil is however extremely detrimental to the environment, growing in tropical conditions such as those found in natural jungles and rainforests in order to produce a profitable amount of oil.

Because of this much of the rainforests and jungles of both Asia and South America have been cleared to make way for palm oil plantations. This not only destroys the natural environment, but also significantly impacts on animal species, of which orangutans are one such species endangered because of palm oil farming.

Using Coconut oil as the main source of MCT oil production is much more environmentally friendly, as coconut trees grow in most warm coastal regions of which there is plenty of available land. Coconut trees will also grow in most soil conditions, making the environmental impact of growing Coconut trees minimal.

The MCT content of coconut oil has a number of health benefits. The most basic of which is promoting a feeling of fullness. A little coconut oil added to each meal means your body will be less likely to send hunger signals for significantly longer than if the oil was excluded. Coconut oil however has a fairly high saturated fat content, even when excluding MCT’s, so the amount you use in a meal for four can be as small as one or two level teaspoons. Some people prefer to substitute the butter or margarine on their bread with coconut oil.

Coconut oil can also be taken directly in between meals to starve off hunger. Take one level teaspoon between one and four times per day.. If using more than one teaspoon a day however, this will have to be limited to a maximum of one teaspoon every six hours, as excess consumption can cause a laxative type effect.

MCT’s are rarely converted into stored fat within the body. The body recognises the fat content of MCT’s immediately, sending them direct to the ATP cycle where they are burnt immediately for energy. This effect kick starts further fat metabolism within the body, leading to increased fat being converted and burnt as energy, hence providing a higher metabolic rate after consumption.

The dosage of one to four level teaspoons per day is also the dose for thermogenic effects, and can be taken between meals, after meals or added to meals directly.

Clinically, coconut oil and MCT’s are used for a variety of disorders. Recent studies have even shown the possibility of MCT’s assisting to prevent and fight Alzheimer’s disease.

Currently proven clinical uses include treatment for food absorption disorders, fat indigestion, celiac disease and liver disease.

The story and health benefits of Coconut Oil

Did you survive cancer? Share your story | Sarah Marsh

Cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was – people are now twice as likely to live at least 10 years after being diagnosed than they were 35 years ago.

Related: Thousands of cancer sufferers surviving decades after diagnosis

That is according to new research by Macmillan Cancer Support, which found more than 170,000 people in the UK who were diagnosed in the 1970s and 1980s are still alive – something the charity described as an “extraordinary” number.

More people now survive because of better treatment, the charity said, although it acknowledged that there was still a huge variation in survival rates according to cancer type.

Did you survive cancer? Tell us about how it shaped your life. Did you learn any valuable lessons? How did it change your relationships? What did it feel like to beat it?

Share your stories with us via the form below.

Did you survive cancer? Share your story | Sarah Marsh

Tall story? Men and women have grown taller over last century, study shows

Men and women have grown taller over the last century, with South Korean women shooting up by more than 20cm (7.9in) on average, and Iranian men gaining 16.5 cm (6.5in). A comprehensive global study looked at the average height of 18-year old men and women in 200 countries between 1914 and 2014.

The results reveal that while Swedes were the tallest people in the world in 1914, Dutch men have risen from 12th place to claim top spot with an average height of 182.5cm (5ft 11.9 inches).

Latvian women, meanwhile, rose from 28th place in 1914 to become the tallest in the world a century later, with an average height of 169.8cm (5ft 6.9in).

With an increase in height seen across the century in every country around the world, the British have also gained a few inches. Both men and women have added around 11cm (4.3 in) to their height since 1914, with the average man now 177.5cm (5ft 9.8in) tall and the average woman boasting a height of 164.4cm (5ft 4.7in).

Mean height change since 1914 – women

James Bentham, a co-author of the research from Imperial College, London, says that the global trend is likely to be down primarily to improvements in nutrition, hygiene and healthcare. “An individual’s genetics has a big influence on [their] height … but once you average over whole populations genetics plays a less key [role],” he added. “Most populations would grow to roughly similar heights if they were all in the same conditions.”

A little extra height brings a number of advantages says Elio Riboli, co-author of the paper and director of the School of Public Health at Imperial College, London. “The good news is that being taller is associated with longer life expectancy,” he said. “This is largely due to a lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease among taller people.” But, Riboli warns, while taller people have been found, on average, to have larger salaries and higher levels of education, there are downsides, with greater height potentially associated with an increased risk of some cancers.

The research was published in the journal eLife by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, a network of nearly 800 health scientists worldwide. The scientists drew on almost 1500 sources, including government health studies and military data, to model changes in the height of 18-year-olds across 200 countries over 100 years from 1914.

The results show that men are taller than women around the world, while for both sexes European countries now scoop the top 10 positions for height, with Dutch men and Latvian women the tallest for their sex. That, says Bentham, could be down to the introduction of a welfare state in many European countries.

By contrast, men from Timor-Leste are the shortest, with a height of 159.8cm (5ft 3in), while the title for shortest women remains with the female population of Guatemala, who have an average height of 149.4cm (4ft 10.8in).

But while height has increased around the world since the eve of the first world war, the researchers found that the degree of change varied greatly between countries.

Mean height change since 1914 – men

While South Korean women have shot up by just over 20cm (7.9 in) since 1914, men in South Africa have grown by just 1.4 cm (0.55 in) over the century. American men, meanwhile, have plateaued in height since the 1960s, resulting in a drop from third place in 1914 to 37th place in 2014. That, the authors suggest, could be down to worsening levels of nutrition and greater inequalities.

The trend in many countries of north and sub-Saharan Africa is also cause for concern says Riboli. While the research shows that height increased in countries such as Uganda and Niger during the early 20th century, the trend has reversed in recent years, with height decreasing among 18-year-olds.

“One reason for these decrease in heights in Africa is the economic situation in the 1980s,” said Alexander Moradi of the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the study. The nutritional and health crises that followed the policy of structural adjustment, he says, led to many children and teenagers failing to reach their full potential in terms of height. “I think one thing that one should keep in mind in these studies is that height is a useful indicator of how nutrition and health is developing and that these are closely related to the overall economic development [of a country], ” he added.

Bentham believes the global trend of increasing height has important ramifications. “How tall we are now is strongly influenced by the environment we grew up in. In turn, our height affects both our life expectancy and our health as adults,” he said. “If we give children the best possible start in life now, they will be healthier and more productive for decades to come.”

Tall story? Men and women have grown taller over last century, study shows

The Complex Story Behind Yet Another Disappeared Write-up At A Best Heart Journal

As soon as once again the European Heart Journal has “unpublished” an write-up without having any discover of retraction or explanation. Strangely, the article– Russian science via the prism of intelligence: is fraud even now achievable?– can still be viewed (at least for now) with a vestigial URL , but it can not be found via the typical channels on the journal internet site. The pages for the story on PubMed and the EHJ site now state: “This report has been temporarily removed.”

The article was very first posted on October 13, 2013. The writer is Alexander Kharlamov, a researcher who formerly worked in Russia and who now resides in the Netherlands. In December  2013 Kharlamov noticed that the report was no longer on the EHJ site. In response to a query he received the following response from the journal’s editor, Thomas Lüscher:

Dear collegue,

As this viewpoint raised a storm inside the Russian Society of Cardiology and the ESC, the ESC and its management Committee decided to give the President of the RSC to create a viewpoint ob behalf of the RSC. Until we recieve this piece, we are hiding your post. Once recieved the two viewpoinrs will be avialable on-line.

Very best regards

Thomas F. Lüscher, MD, FRCR

To date the EHJ has not published a response from the RSC (Russian Society of Cardiology) or republished the Kharlamov write-up.

Initially, this incident seems to reek of politics. Certainly, 6 months later on, in a subsequent letter to Kharmalov about the continued absence of the paper, Lüscher wrote:

I hope you recognize that the EHJ does not want to be involved in politics. We are a scientific journal and are pleased to discuss problems close to it, but we will never interfere beyond. I hope you can comply with this strategy of us.

A Difficult Story

But a much more cautious examination of the unique post leads to the suspicion that this story is a bit more complicated and raises questions each about the internal peer review method at the EHJ and about the original paper. Quite just, the Kharmalov paper is a mess, in critical need to have of editing and peer overview, if not significant surgical procedure. Some of its points seem to be really worth consideration: cardiovascular wellness in Russia is a nationwide disgrace, funding for investigation is overshadowed by funding for the intelligence services, and cardiovascular research has misplaced prestige in the submit-Soviet era.

But other statements are very problematic. What, for instance, does this statement indicate?

Russian science faces the issue of fraud in one more dimension, a dimension of the counteraction to the national governmental authorities, and specifically the Federal Safety Service (FSB formerly the KGB).

The following passage is particularly dense, and prospects to the inevitable suspicion that Kharlamaov is at least partly motivated because his very own investigation into “theranostics of atherosclerosis employing uniform multifunctional noble metal nano particles,” what ever that could suggest, has not been properly acquired.

The Russian government is significantly far more concerned with concerns of nationwide security, and not with the wants of the population or with biomedicine.

Every single single discovery, for instance in biomedical industries or nanotechnologies, right away gets a national treasure. The ideal illustration of such restrictions is presented by the classified outcomes of NANOM studies4,5 in Yekaterinburg (Russia). The group at the Ural Institute of Cardiology has identified a new method for theranostics of atherosclerosis using uniform multifunctional noble metal nanoparticles. Near-infrared optics and plasmonic photothermal treatment are capable to replace traditional strategies of imaging and management of atherosclerosis, such as percutaneous interventions and coronary artery bypass surgical procedure. Scientists in Yekaterinburg can’t exchange the raw data with other colleagues abroad simply because of limitations issued by the Russian federal authorities.

Right after studying this kind of a passage the inevitable query to request the journal is: did any person really read this paper prior to publishing? Was it peer reviewed?

It shouldn’t need to be stated but the time for peer review is ahead of publication, not after. The EHJ would have been properly justified in rejecting the post or demanding main revisions. But by publishing the post and then removing it with out explanation or a retraction the journal doubles its culpability, since it now seems to have a seriously flawed editorial process and it appears to have yielded to political pressure.

As I described at the prime of this publish, the EHJ has removed articles or blog posts before without observe or explanation. The earlier incident is very distinct however. You can go through my coverage of that incident here and here.

The Complex Story Behind Yet Another Disappeared Write-up At A Best Heart Journal

How"s A Man Supposed To Get A Good Shave? The Story Of Harry"s And The Razor Wars

Every single once in a blue moon you experience a brand that you just want to love. It took place with Apple and it happened with Zappos. The company gets it all right, the stars align, and you fall head above heels. Like a higher college crush, you’re willing to overlook the occasional flaw. But what occurs on that odd event when you really like the brand more than the product?

I had that knowledge not too long ago. Whilst reading the morning email, I saw an ad on Huffington Publish. It was the image of a lovely razor with the headline: Ought to an eight-Pack of High quality Blades Genuinely Cost 32 Dollars? Harry’s, Worth the Switch. Then as an advertising executive, I did some thing that is practically unheard of – I clicked on a banner ad.

I live in Boston and often root for the house team, even if Gillette is now owned by P&ampG in Cincinnati. Nonetheless, the value of razor blades is irksome. As much as all business individuals love the idea of giving an individual a razor and then marketing them the blades for the rest of their lifestyle, you can’t help but think that the firm has constructed planned obsolescence into the item. (At those charges, cannot they make those blades last a tiny longer?) So, I was seduced by the promise of Harry’s beautifully crafted razor and wicked sharp blades, all delivered to my door, at nearly half the cost of my Gillette blades.

This is not a thinly veiled e-commerce play by Harry’s to sell razors to tech savvy buyers. The two founders have raised $ 122 million and bought a German factory that has been manufacturing razor blades because 1920. Along with Schick and Gillette, Harry’s is the only other business in the shaving group that controls design and style, manufacturing, and direct product sales of their product. They are hunting large game, and exactly where they might have the edge is in buyer encounter.

The Harry’s Web internet site drew me appropriate in. It’s beautifully designed and entirely intuitive to navigate. The image says luxury, understated, and human. Everything from the company story to the value proposition clicked into spot like a perfectly executed Rubik’s Cube. German engineering, a focused manufacturing facility, spectacular industrial style, a founder that also produced Warby Parker, and a philanthropic dedication – what’s not to enjoy? I took the bait and ordered a shave set.

From the second, I clicked “Purchase,” I was nurtured like a new puppy, from the thank you note, the classy bundle that arrived sooner than promised, and the virtual concierge services supplied by Katie Ingram in a quite personalized email. Gillette, do you even know my title?

Like enjoy at 1st sight, I was prepared to commit: “Yes, I will be a buyer for life.” That is, till I shaved with Harry’s razor for the 1st time. It is Ok, greater than a disposable razor, but no match for the leading-of-the-line, and costly, Gillette razor. The razor head does not pivot nearly ample to be valuable and the blades just aren’t that sharp.

Well maybe it is just me. Possibly I’m not a very good biological match for what Harry’s has to offer you. So, I turned to the critiques to spot-verify my perceptions. One reviewer called it the “iPhone of razors.” With out exception, the idea, the brand expertise, and the merchandise layout acquired outstanding marks. The real shave – the heart of the matter – received faint praise. Some typical sentiments: a very good worth for the value, greater than comparably priced razors, not as excellent as the premium goods from the sector giants.

In just minutes, my hope for a daily life-prolonged adore affair with Harry’s received dashed. What’s a brand to do when the advertising outshines the merchandise? Harry’s provides a couple of lessons.

Via their passion they have hopefully earned ample loyalty and time to compose the following chapter of their story. The top quality of their communications, their commitment to great design, their social presence, and their buyer expertise propose a organization that strategies to pursue perfection. I predict a considerably-enhanced razor and blade inside of the 12 months. The brand encounter will serve as the bridge to span this gap.

Although Harry’s did not very get me to the finish line, who understands what market intelligence they possess. There may possibly be a essential mass of individuals using disposable razors that see Harry’s as a phase up the worth chain. To an army of Millennials getting into the perform force, Harry’s pricing and sleek design and style could win them more than. It is a story nonetheless unfolding and the income numbers may in the long run inform a tale of victory.

If nothing at all else, one thing great has come of their promise to elevate the market. They have disrupted the shaving category (along with Dollar Shave Club). Gillette has already responded with a subscription blade service. Whether or not they will also yield to the pricing stress is yet another question. This represents capitalism at it is finest, and thanks to Harry’s we can very likely anticipate a better shaving knowledge at a reduced price.

How"s A Man Supposed To Get A Good Shave? The Story Of Harry"s And The Razor Wars

The Story of Soreness: From Prayer to Painkillers review Joanna Bourke"s erudite and witty study

Joanna Bourke is that uncommon bird, an academic who manages to combine erudite scholarship with a sharp wit and an accessible prose design. She also has a nose for the intriguingly sensational: concern, rape and killing have been the subjects of prior acclaimed investigations, and her latest guide, The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers, helps make a fitting addition to this grim stock. Since not even the luckiest mortal can survive a existence with no some near acquaintance with ache, it have to be a topic of universal relevance.

One of her earlier books was titled What It Means to Be Human, and going through ache is definitely one important ingredient in that recipe. Although its alleviation has been a central quest for all societies, as she attests there has been quite small written about the expression of pain and what variables may possibly influence this.

Though the advance of medication and the advancement of painkilling techniques have affected the frequency and degrees with which pain is experienced it remains an inalienably subjective event and hence tough to quantify or evaluate from a scientific standpoint. As Bourke puts it: “In clinical contexts only some ‘pain utterances’ are regarded as ‘physiologically real’: a woman, for instance, who claims she is in agony because a rat is chewing her stomach is put in a straitjacket, rather than given novocaine.”

In the heat of battle even the severely wounded may possibly not come to feel ache if strong and diverting emotion is present. The writer of The Doctor in War, writing in the course of the initial planet war, advised that severe wounds “carry for the most part – most mercifully – their own anaesthetics with them”. On the other hand, individuals frequently fail to register bodily distress since it is as well ingrained in their every day daily life to be differentiated, so aching muscles, headaches, stomach upsets or hunger pangs, for illustration, can turn into perceived as the norm. This is probably to be far more often the case in certain environments – frequently, although by no means exclusively, economically straitened ones.

There is also the phenomenon of ache felt second hand by the sufferer’s intimates, leading to the willing suppression of expressions of discomfort – as in the testimony of a heroic husband who, obtaining sent his wife out on an errand, explained to a nurse: “The pain’s horrible negative but I didn’t want to spoil Eliza’s Christmas.” In this way pain can estrange people the two from other people and themselves, and divide cultures. As Bourke tellingly puts it, “currently being-in-ache is in no way distributed democratically”.

The guide is divided into topics, some obvious: diagnosis, relief, sympathy others more arcane: estrangement, metaphor, gesture, religion. Bourke is specifically fascinating on these latter classes, the place her breadth of scholarship is displayed. 1 appealing characteristic of the book is its wealthy references. Bourke has study widely in pursuit of her topic and brings not only physicians and scientists to bear on her topic but also writers and poets, who are much the most successful communicators of what it is to be in discomfort. She quotes several academic authorities to demonstrate that ache, whilst a universal phenomenon, is neither described nor evaluated in universals.

Far more radically, she argues that physiology is itself “profoundly affected by culture and metaphor”. For illustration, the humoral theory, dominant pre-19th century, gave rise to Thomas Gray’s description of pains “wandering” during his “constitution” right up until “they correct into the Gout”. The temperament of the person, food, the weather and individual relationships all affected the expertise of discomfort, which “come up(s) in the context of complicated interactions inside the environment, like interactions with objects and other men and women”. War, for instance, has a prolonged background as a beneficial metaphor prior to technological advances led to mechanical imagery supplanting it. Bourke cites John Donne’s Devotions on Emergent Events, where sickness is represented as a physical conflict between kingdoms. Donne’s fellow poet and divine George Herbert also used the metaphor of violent battle to describe psychological pain.

A single of the most distressing chapters of the guide is on the part of religion which, maybe unsurprisingly, has an unedifying historical past of conscripting ache into its orthodoxy. Pain’s role is to teach submission to the powerful, the two in this lifestyle and the existence to come. The woeful story of poor Joseph Townend, whose appropriate arm grew to become caught to his entire body through the accident of a significant childhood burn, tells how he came to terms with a series of brutal “health care” interventions by reflecting on his “previous wickedness in resisting the Holy Spirit” and by “weeping, singing hymns, reading the Scriptures … and seeking forward to the time when my feet would again stand inside of the gates of Zion”.

William Nolan, creating in 1786, exhorts the clergy to pay a visit to individuals in charitable hospitals in purchase “to admonish them from a repetition of those irregularities, which possibly laid the foundation of their present sickness”. But discomfort was also the route to self-improvement. In 1777, soon after becoming hit by a runaway horse, the philanthropist John Brown wrote: “Do me good, oh God! By this unpleasant affliction may possibly I see the wonderful uncertainty of overall health ease and comfort that all my Springs are in Thee.” And Harriet Martineau, the wonderful 19th-century social reformer, wrote: “I was patient to illness and discomfort because I was proud of the distinction of getting taken into this kind of particular pupillage by God.”

It is now effectively established that sympathy is a powerful remedial agent, but virtually as disturbing as her account of religion’s romantic relationship to ache is Bourke’s examination of surgery and surgeons who, for most of our historical past, have had to practise their profession without benefit of anaesthetics or powerful analgesics. She alludes to the mastectomy carried out with no anaesthetic on the novelist Fanny Burney, which Penelope Fitzgerald, in turn, employed as the basis of an account of a equivalent method in her novel The Blue Flower. Burney described in a letter to her sister “the most torturing discomfort” at which “I essential no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I started a scream that lasted unremittingly in the course of the whole time of the incident – &amp I practically marvel that it rings not in my Ears nonetheless! So excruciating was the agony.” If this weren’t unnerving enough Bourke reveals that, rather nicely during historical past, surgeons have been notable for their lack of sympathy, even exhibiting sentiments of cruelty in direction of their individuals. In accordance to the author of Heads and Faces and How to Research Them (1886), “good” surgeons have been those “with stiff muscle and a firm resolve to use the knife successfully”.

But it is not only surgeons who are cavalier with pain. The two children and females have, historically, had their discomfort dismissed. A 2003 review showed that men struggling publish-operative discomfort had been substantially much more probably to be prescribed optimal discomfort management. In a 1990 study at the UCLA Emergency Medicine Centre, Hispanics had been twice as most likely as non-Hispanic whites to get no medication for soreness. And most of us who have endured existing hospital circumstances will know that pain relief is all too usually supplied only in accordance to a timetable and not in response to expressed need.

It is probably churlish of me amid such a wealth of fascinating insights to complain that there is not enough in this guide about psychological soreness, the variety that our existing state of civilisation is most apt to endure. That notwithstanding, this is a bold and amazing guide about an enemy that understands no historical or cultural bounds.

Salley Vickers’s most recent novel is The Cleaner of Chartres.

The Story of Soreness: From Prayer to Painkillers review Joanna Bourke"s erudite and witty study

The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers by Joanna Bourke review

These medical implements weren’t around in the 18th century … Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Apart from being distressing and unpleasant, the main thing about physical pain is the sheer tediousness of it. It may monopolise your attention for hours or days on end, but the experience itself remains blank and nondescript. You can probably locate your pain, and you may try to gauge its severity. But if you try to describe it, you will find yourself reaching for far-fetched metaphors: it will be shooting or piercing or crushing, or like a dagger in your stomach or a clamp across your temples. As Joanna Bourke points out in her ambitious and original new book, these figures of speech are not only hackneyed but also uninformative. (When did you last have a dagger in your stomach or a clamp on your head?)

The Victorian radical Harriet Martineau spent most of her life in pain. When she was very young she liked to think she had been taken into “special pupillage by God”, and she looked forward to an early death until, as she put it, it was “too late to die early”. But when she grew up and became a versatile and prolific author she found it impossible to turn her experience of pain to any literary purpose. She could talk about the facts surrounding it, but not the inner sensations. “The sensations themselves cannot be retained, nor recalled, nor revived,” she said. “They are destroyed so utterly, that even memory can lay no hold upon them.”

Our pleasures connect us to the world, it seems, but pain condemns us to isolation. There are odes to pleasure, and paintings, plays, symphonies and operas that celebrate its infinite variety; but there are no works of art that express the nothingness of pain. Tales of Prometheus on his rock or images of Christ on the cross may move us, but they say nothing about what their pain may have felt like. Pain, as Virginia Woolf observed, lies beyond the bounds of art: “The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare and Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language itself runs dry.”

The word “pain” originates in ancient law, where it meant penalty or punishment, and Bourke argues that our pre-modern ancestors saw pain not just as a sensation but as an episode in a providential scheme where crimes and misdemeanours are redeemed by sacrificial suffering. Our pains, on this reckoning, are an inescapable part of the economy of a just and well-ordered world. If they are not attributable to our own misdeeds, then, according to the book of Genesis, they are due to Adam and Eve who, as a result of their bad behaviour in the Garden of Eden, condemned their sons to relentless toil by the sweat of their brow, while their daughters were doomed to bring forth children in sorrow and anguish. We should therefore welcome pain into our lives as a warning against indulgence, a reminder of our duties, and an incentive to repentance.

You might have expected the rise of scientific naturalism to put an immediate end to the redemptive theory of pain, but it did not. From an evolutionary perspective, susceptibility to pain can easily be seen as a well-chosen adaptation: your hangover is nature’s way of advising you to lay off the booze, just as the pain in your foot tells you to pull a thorn out and your scalded tongue informs you that the soup is too hot. On the other hand, you might think that a slight twinge would have served the purpose just as well: full-blown pain seems to exceed the remit of natural selection, and when it becomes “total pain” it is surely evolution’s cruellest joke – a joke repeated ad nauseam till recent times, when medical science at last acquired the power to control pain or even eliminate it.

Bourke shows that the story is much more complicated. Her absorbing survey of medical attitudes to pain in Britain since the 18th century reveals that professional attention was traditionally focused on curing diseases, mending breakages or saving lives, rather than controlling pain, and patients were left to dose themselves with folk remedies such as alcohol, opium or willow bark if they wanted to. Around 1800, the chemist Humphry Davy suggested that surgeons and dentists might consider using nitrous oxide (also known as laughing gas) to knock out their clients while they operated on them. But no one was interested at the time. For patients, the pain of having an infected leg amputated, or a rotten tooth pulled, or a cancerous breast removed was supposed to be both character-forming and conducive to health, and, in any case, it was brief and would soon be forgotten. The cries and contortions of the patient were also considered useful to practitioners, instilling a habit of unflinching objectivity in the face of suffering as well as enabling them to monitor their work as they went along. By 1850, however, a few surgeons had started experimenting with ether and chloroform, and they soon discovered the advantages of being able to operate on a living patient who lay down as still as a cadaver.

In 1853, Queen Victoria stole a march on the medical establishment by taking painkilling chloroform when she gave birth to her eighth child, but reservations about the use of anaesthetics persisted in spite of the royal seal of approval. Early in the 20th century, Sir William Osler warned medical students that excessive provision of pain relief might make them weak and sentimental: they still needed to cultivate a stance of “imperturbability”, and take professional pride in the “callousness which thinks only of the good to be effected, and goes ahead regardless of smaller considerations”. An article in the British Medical Journal in 1930 described how a wise doctor responded to a ”society woman” who consulted him about chest pain. “My lady,” he said, “I might give you something that would relieve the pain, but I don’t propose to do so – the pain is a warning to you to curtail your activities and live a different life.”

The Story of Pain traces the slow process by which the medical professions have come to accept responsibility for the management of pain. But it also reminds us that the goal remains elusive. The measurement of pain is a difficult matter. The traditional method depends on asking patients to rate their suffering, perhaps on a scale from one to 10, or by responding to some kind of questionnaire. But these approaches are liable to be distorted by self-pity or misplaced heroism, not to mention deliberate dishonesty, and in the last 50 years there have been concerted efforts to devise objective scientific measures of pain. An early technique called infrared imaging thermography was supposed to give doctors a “physiological equivalence of pain” by measuring variations in skin temperature, and more recently various forms of brain imaging have been promoted as taking the guesswork and subjectivity out of pain detection. But the problem will not go away: when patients dispute a scientific estimate of their suffering, who is to act as referee?

The project of flushing out the “malingerers” who are supposed to exaggerate their sufferings has a long and curious history. An observer at a London hospital in the 1890s admired the “stalwart Britons” who endure their agonies in silence, contrasting them with the Jews, Turks and persons of “doubtful nationality” who hollered histrionically at the slightest discomfort, and in the 1930s a leading doctor pronounced that “the well-to-do suffer more from pain stimuli than the uneducated, hardier, poorer classes”. But how could they possibly know? A dusky woman will have underdeveloped sensibilities, they thought, so she could be expected to give birth without complaint, but if a fair lady did the same, she was to be admired for her self-command. The argument has the advantage of perfect flexibility: if I scream louder than you it is because of my exquisite sensitivity, but if you scream louder than me you obviously have no willpower. Our pains, it seems, are always going to be inscrutable – a matter for moral judgment as much as medical science.

• To order The Story of Painfor £14.79 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.

The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers by Joanna Bourke review

Share your story: are you a caregiver for an individual with mental sickness?

A single consequence of the inadequate mental overall health care program in the US is that the households and pals of men and women with mental illnesses often have to fill in the gaps and offer care to their loved ones. The caregivers featured in the Guardian’s series on the mental wellness crisis in the US are not alone.

It’s tough to know the actual amount of Americans presently caring for mentally ill loved ones, and even a lot more challenging to quantify the price of caregiving, from hrs invested taking off function to income lent or spent on fundamentals like foods and shelter.

As part of the Guardian’s ongoing investigation into mental wellness care in the US, we want you to support us illustrate the rippling effects of the broken technique.

Share your story of how you have cared for a mentally unwell loved a single (or loved ones) and we’ll characteristic picked responses on the Guardian. If you happen to be a therapy provider who’s witnessed caregivers struggling to get aid for the people in their lives, we want to hear from you as well.

Share your story: are you a caregiver for an individual with mental sickness?

Stephen Sutton"s story has new twist as he leaves hospital

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton with his advisor Prof Gary Middleton, his mom Jane and David Cameron at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital. Photograph: Jane Tovey/Birmingham NHS Founda/PA

A teenager with incurable cancer who has raised much more than £3m for charity has been discharged from hospital.

Stephen Sutton, 19, was becoming treated for multiple tumours at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital and was visited on Friday by David Cameron who praised the teenager’s incredible zest for life.

Cameron tweeted a link to Sutton’s JustGiving webpage, exactly where he is raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust, urging individuals to donate, saying: “An honour to meet @StephensStory nowadays – his courage is an inspiration to all of us.”

On Facebook, Stephen wrote: “I then also have some much more fantastic news … I have been discharged from hospital. Soon after becoming at a point in which it seemed like I would in no way make it out it feels so awesome to be ready to put that. The recovery I’ve undergone not too long ago is really impressive .

“It has been tough, there is an emotional trauma attached to virtually dying (a few occasions) that will take a whilst to get employed to, but eventually I now come to feel even much more lucky to just be here and the experience serves as a potent reminder to go out there and dwell lifestyle as freely and as positively as attainable.

“The easy things we consider for granted are all blessings, and residing actually is a privilege we need to all consider and get pleasure from and make the most of!”

Sutton, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, had earlier posed for photographs alongside the prime minister, his mother Jane and the advisor treating him.

Cameron gave Sutton a letter saying he was humbled by his bravery and optimistic frame of mind. The teenager has raised a lot more than £3.1m in donations from 131,000 folks since his story became extensively public.

Sutton explained he has had talked about the probability of attempting a new trial drug treatment method, which would be his fifth regime of chemotherapy, but for the time being Stephen stated he and his family members aimed to “just get a bit of normality back into our lives”.

Stephen Sutton"s story has new twist as he leaves hospital

Benedict Cumberbatch joins celebrities backing Stephen"s Story as donations leading £2.eight million

“The general oncologist and team I’ve been seeing will discuss the events with my professor in the morning and we will see exactly where we go from there … It is even now a situation of taking each day as it comes, but at the second the days just preserve on coming!!”

This week he also released a 10-minute YouTube video called When Existence Offers You Cancer, featuring interviews with his mum, his college teachers and his ideal friend. In it he makes use of the pay out-off line that “cancer sucks but lifestyle is wonderful”.

Manford has now rushed to organise a gig in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust right after speaking with Mr Sutton at his hospital bedside this week. The charity gig in Birmingham offered out in four minutes.

Manford mentioned it is set to be “a excellent evening” since the terminally-ill teenager who inspired it is “just phenomenal”.

Mr Sutton has caught the public’s imagination with his positivity and refusal to really feel sorry for himself after being diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 15.

The teenager, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, last yr set up a bucket list of factors to attain ahead of he died – like raising £10,000 for the believe in.

He upped the figure to a £1 million after turning out to be an Web sensation and has now raised far more than £2.eight million with the complete rising swiftly.

His cause is aided by a number of celebrities, including Sherlock star Cumberbatch and Scorching Fuzz actor Pegg, the band Coldplay and footballer Ben Foster, who have all posed for pictures holding indications to inspire folks to donate, posted on Twitter with #thumbsupforstephen.

Manford has explained he would like to support him raise £5 million.

The stand up comic, who met Mr Sutton at a charity gig two years ago, visited the teenager in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on Thursday.

He informed LBC radio: “He is wonderful. Even in his bed there with his tubes and masks with nurses coming in each twenty minutes to give him medicine, he was even now speaking about undertaking a sky dive and hoping to get in the Guinness Guide of Records and diverse factors on his bucket record.

“He was talking about placing the fun into fundraising.

“He mentioned, ‘Don’t tug on people’s heart strings and make folks really feel guilty – don’t make men and women truly feel guilty because if they come to feel guilty they will give a fiver, if they are possessing entertaining they will give 20 quid’.

“We chatted for a couple of hrs and he is very savvy. There is also one thing about him.”

Celebrities including Stephen Fry and Russell Brand have already backed Mr Sutton’s fundraising efforts, and music mogul Simon Cowell has pledged to make a “significant donation”.

Benedict Cumberbatch joins celebrities backing Stephen"s Story as donations leading £2.eight million

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations pass £2.5m

That prompted JustGiving itself to donate £50,000 to mark the record Stephen has set. It Tweeted: “Stephen we think you are remarkable. It’s been a privilege supporting your fundraising. You’ve now broken all fundraising information on JustGiving – so right here is a special donation from JustGiving.”

Much more than 106,000 individual donations have now been produced on the teenager’s JustGiving web page, the bulk of them modest sums this kind of ranging from £5 to £20.

Stephen, was diagnosed four many years in the past with bowel cancer and regardless of surgical treatment, the aggressive cancer spread to distinct elements of his entire body. After further remedy and operations, doctors concluded it was incurable.

The teenagers response was not to despair but to increase cash for charity as component of a bucket-record of items to do ahead of he died, and it has been his zest and enthusiasm for adventure which appears to have inspired so many people to make donations in his honour.

He has taken component in a charity skydive, bungee jumped, organised a fundraising football match and a flashmob, watched rugby at Twickenham, flown first class, acquired a tattoo, hugged an animal bigger than him, learnt to juggle, ridden a Segway and even identified someone with much more surgical scars than him.

Even now to be completed is a trip to the ruins of Machu Picchu, in Peru, travel to Australia and dancing with carnival goers in Brazil.

Sadly, it looked doubtful as to no matter whether Stephen would ever be capable to complete his record.

His overall health took a flip for the worse on Tuesday and he believed death was quick approaching. True to character he posted a photograph of himself in his Birmingham hospital bed on Facebook, giving a thumbs up, with the message: “I’ve done nicely to blag items as well as I have up till now, but regrettably I feel this is just one hurdle as well far.”

Two days later he up to date his followers with much better information. Regardless of a single of his lungs collapsing he was still alive. Writing on Facebook on Friday, he mentioned he considered he had been a “goner”, but was “still fighting”.

The ups and downs of Stephen’s situation have had the result of galvanising donations nonetheless more.

Kate Collins, director of fundraising at the Teenage Cancer Believe in, explained: “There is always the emotion that sits around an individual of Stephen’s age dealing with the finish of his existence, which is amazingly unhappy and happens much more often that men and women genuinely know. But it is the way Stephen has communicated which is past examine.”

She stated the money raised would consider the charity to “a whole other level”, incorporating: “I’m totally confident this will move the support we can give youthful individuals with cancer and their households to a different area. It’s a remarkable legacy.”

One of the strategies of Stephen’s phenomenal fundraising accomplishment is the way he has managed to harnessed social media. Along with his Facebook page, he has a Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Tumblr and Instagram pages. Stephen has also posted a new film about his life on YouTube.

The result has been a raft of celebrities Tweeting photographs of themselves with the hashtag thumbsupforstephen and holding indications encouraging folks to donate.

The campaign was originally championed by Jason Manford, the comedian, who mentioned he had met Stephen at charity gigs and was bowled over by his good perspective as he strove to make the ideal of his circumstance.

Cancer survivor Hannah Merridale, 29, who had the middle and lower lobe of her proper lung removed following she produced a carcinoid tumour, pledged to run the Clapham 10K Race For Daily life on Might 31, in Stephen’s honour.

She stated: “1 of the factors on his bucket list is to inspire an individual to increase funds for charity and I am going to do just that.”

On Friday Stephen, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: “I don’t want to over dramatise factors as well significantly, but I do just want to mention that everyone’s optimistic ideas and support has been hugely appreciated, so thank you for that.

“The tumours in my physique are nonetheless rife and harmful, but I feel so fortunate to just nevertheless be right here, and in truth I truly feel fully privileged to be in this place in which I can help make such a distinction to other folks folks lives..”

To donate, pay a visit to http://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Sutton-TCT.

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations pass £2.5m

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations pass £2.6m

That prompted JustGiving itself to donate £50,000 to mark the record Stephen has set. It Tweeted: “Stephen we consider you are wonderful. It is been a privilege supporting your fundraising. You’ve now broken all fundraising records on JustGiving – so right here is a specific donation from JustGiving.”

Far more than 106,000 individual donations have now been created on the teenager’s JustGiving web page, the bulk of them modest sums this kind of ranging from £5 to £20.

Stephen, was diagnosed four many years ago with bowel cancer and regardless of surgery, the aggressive cancer spread to diverse elements of his body. Following additional remedy and operations, medical doctors concluded it was incurable.

The teenagers response was not to despair but to increase income for charity as portion of a bucket-record of issues to do before he died, and it has been his zest and enthusiasm for journey which appears to have inspired so several people to make donations in his honour.

He has taken element in a charity skydive, bungee jumped, organised a fundraising football match and a flashmob, watched rugby at Twickenham, flown first class, received a tattoo, hugged an animal larger than him, learnt to juggle, ridden a Segway and even identified a person with far more surgical scars than him.

Nevertheless to be completed is a journey to the ruins of Machu Picchu, in Peru, travel to Australia and dancing with carnival goers in Brazil.

Sadly, it looked doubtful as to whether Stephen would ever be able to full his checklist.

His overall health took a turn for the worse on Tuesday and he imagined death was fast approaching. True to character he posted a photograph of himself in his Birmingham hospital bed on Facebook, offering a thumbs up, with the message: “I’ve done well to blag factors as properly as I have up till now, but unfortunately I believe this is just one particular hurdle also far.”

Two days later on he updated his followers with much better information. Regardless of one particular of his lungs collapsing he was nevertheless alive. Creating on Facebook on Friday, he mentioned he imagined he had been a “goner”, but was “still fighting”.

The ups and downs of Stephen’s issue have had the result of galvanising donations nevertheless even more.

Kate Collins, director of fundraising at the Teenage Cancer Believe in, said: “There is constantly the emotion that sits close to an individual of Stephen’s age dealing with the end of his daily life, which is amazingly unhappy and transpires more frequently that folks really know. But it is the way Stephen has communicated which is beyond compare.”

She stated the funds raised would take the charity to “a entire other level”, adding: “I’m absolutely confident this will move the assistance we can give youthful people with cancer and their families to a diverse place. It is a remarkable legacy.”

One particular of the strategies of Stephen’s phenomenal fundraising achievement is the way he has managed to harnessed social media. Along with his Facebook webpage, he has a Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Tumblr and Instagram pages. Stephen has also posted a new movie about his life on YouTube.

The consequence has been a raft of celebrities Tweeting images of themselves with the hashtag thumbsupforstephen and holding indications encouraging men and women to donate.

The campaign was initially championed by Jason Manford, the comedian, who mentioned he had met Stephen at charity gigs and was bowled above by his constructive attitude as he strove to make the greatest of his predicament.

Cancer survivor Hannah Merridale, 29, who had the middle and reduce lobe of her correct lung removed after she produced a carcinoid tumour, pledged to run the Clapham 10K Race For Existence on Could 31, in Stephen’s honour.

She mentioned: “1 of the factors on his bucket list is to inspire somebody to raise income for charity and I am going to do just that.”

On Friday Stephen, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: “I really do not want to over dramatise factors too significantly, but I do just want to mention that everyone’s positive thoughts and help has been hugely appreciated, so thank you for that.

“The tumours in my body are even now rife and harmful, but I come to feel so fortunate to just even now be right here, and in fact I truly feel totally privileged to be in this place in which I can help make such a distinction to other people folks lives..”

To donate, go to http://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Sutton-TCT.

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations pass £2.6m

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations hit £2.4m

More than 97,000 individual donations have now been made on Mr Sutton’s JustGiving page.

The teenager, who decided to raise the money for charity as part of a bucket-list of things to do before he died, has been blogging from hospital where his health took a turn for the worse on Tuesday.

Writing on Facebook yesterday, he said he thought he had been a “goner”, but was “still fighting” as donations from the public continued to flood in.

He has enjoyed support from a host of celebrities who have taken to Twitter, posing for pictures with the hashtag thumbsupforstephen and holding signs to encourage people to donate.

The campaign was originally championed by comedian Jason Manford, who said he had previously met the teenager at charity gigs and was bowled over by his positivity as he strove to make the best of his situation.

Yesterday Mr Sutton, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: “I am still in a very vulnerable position. I am very limited in what I can do and am still permanently hooked up to oxygen.

“But I am in high spirits and blessed to have so much love and support around me.

“To get to see the million pound fund-raising target being reached was just phenomenal!”

The teenager was diagnosed with what was initially bowel cancer when he was 15.

Despite surgery, the aggressive cancer spread to different parts of his body and, after further treatment and operations, doctors concluded it was incurable.

Mr Sutton set up his charity fundraising website and blog on Facebook in January last year to keep people up to date with his progress.

Siobhan Dunn, chief executive of the Teenage Cancer Trust, praised the inspiring teenager and ambassador for the charity.

She said: “I’ve had the privilege of meeting him and his positivity is always remembered by all that meet him or hear him speak.

“Stephen is making the biggest possible difference to Teenage Cancer Trust and the young people who need our help.”

Speaking previously, Mr Sutton said he disliked the term “dying from my cancer – I am living with my cancer, despite it being there”.

His bucket-list of 46 things to do before he died included things like hugging an elephant, crowd-surfing in a rubber dinghy, playing the drums at a Wembley cup final, getting a tattoo and appearing on BBC drama Doctors.

To donate, visit http://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Sutton-TCT.

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the web as donations hit £2.4m

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on-line as donations hit £2.4m

More than 97,000 individual donations have now been made on Mr Sutton’s JustGiving page.

The teenager, who decided to raise the money for charity as part of a bucket-list of things to do before he died, has been blogging from hospital where his health took a turn for the worse on Tuesday.

Writing on Facebook yesterday, he said he thought he had been a “goner”, but was “still fighting” as donations from the public continued to flood in.

He has enjoyed support from a host of celebrities who have taken to Twitter, posing for pictures with the hashtag thumbsupforstephen and holding signs to encourage people to donate.

The campaign was originally championed by comedian Jason Manford, who said he had previously met the teenager at charity gigs and was bowled over by his positivity as he strove to make the best of his situation.

Yesterday Mr Sutton, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: “I am still in a very vulnerable position. I am very limited in what I can do and am still permanently hooked up to oxygen.

“But I am in high spirits and blessed to have so much love and support around me.

“To get to see the million pound fund-raising target being reached was just phenomenal!”

The teenager was diagnosed with what was initially bowel cancer when he was 15.

Despite surgery, the aggressive cancer spread to different parts of his body and, after further treatment and operations, doctors concluded it was incurable.

Mr Sutton set up his charity fundraising website and blog on Facebook in January last year to keep people up to date with his progress.

Siobhan Dunn, chief executive of the Teenage Cancer Trust, praised the inspiring teenager and ambassador for the charity.

She said: “I’ve had the privilege of meeting him and his positivity is always remembered by all that meet him or hear him speak.

“Stephen is making the biggest possible difference to Teenage Cancer Trust and the young people who need our help.”

Speaking previously, Mr Sutton said he disliked the term “dying from my cancer – I am living with my cancer, despite it being there”.

His bucket-list of 46 things to do before he died included things like hugging an elephant, crowd-surfing in a rubber dinghy, playing the drums at a Wembley cup final, getting a tattoo and appearing on BBC drama Doctors.

To donate, visit http://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Sutton-TCT.

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on-line as donations hit £2.4m

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the internet

A lot more than 97,000 personal donations have now been produced on Mr Sutton’s JustGiving page.

The teenager, who made the decision to raise the money for charity as element of a bucket-listing of things to do before he died, has been blogging from hospital exactly where his overall health took a flip for the worse on Tuesday.

Writing on Facebook yesterday, he explained he thought he had been a “goner”, but was “still fighting” as donations from the public continued to flood in.

He has loved support from a host of celebrities who have taken to Twitter, posing for photos with the hashtag thumbsupforstephen and holding indicators to inspire individuals to donate.

The campaign was initially championed by comedian Jason Manford, who said he had previously met the teenager at charity gigs and was bowled more than by his positivity as he strove to make the best of his scenario.

Yesterday Mr Sutton, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: “I am still in a very vulnerable place. I am really limited in what I can do and am still completely hooked up to oxygen.

“But I am in high spirits and blessed to have so significantly love and support all around me.

“To get to see the million pound fund-raising target being reached was just phenomenal!”

The teenager was diagnosed with what was at first bowel cancer when he was 15.

Despite surgical treatment, the aggressive cancer spread to various elements of his body and, soon after even more remedy and operations, doctors concluded it was incurable.

Mr Sutton set up his charity fundraising web site and site on Facebook in January final 12 months to keep men and women up to date with his progress.

Siobhan Dunn, chief executive of the Teenage Cancer Trust, praised the inspiring teenager and ambassador for the charity.

She explained: “I’ve had the privilege of meeting him and his positivity is often remembered by all that meet him or hear him communicate.

“Stephen is producing the biggest possible big difference to Teenage Cancer Believe in and the younger people who require our assist.”

Speaking previously, Mr Sutton said he disliked the term “dying from my cancer – I am living with my cancer, despite it becoming there”.

His bucket-record of 46 items to do prior to he died integrated issues like hugging an elephant, crowd-surfing in a rubber dinghy, playing the drums at a Wembley cup ultimate, receiving a tattoo and appearing on BBC drama Medical professionals.

To donate, pay a visit to http://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Sutton-TCT.

Teenage cancer patient Stephen Sutton posts "life story" on the internet

Stephen"s Story: a dying teenager gives charities a moving lesson in storytelling

Stephen’s story encouraged the generosity of men and women across the world and has raised £1.5m for Teenage Cancer Believe in so far.

Stephen’s Story, the story of a dying teenage cancer patient who has recorded his sickness on social media in purchase to raise funds for charity, is getting an impact far past the Uk by capturing the imagination and encouraging the generosity of individuals from across the world.

To date, the viral campaign has raised £1.5m for Teenage Cancer Trust. Its power lies in the reality that it is not Teenage Cancer Trust’s story, but Stephen’s story. Every person at Teenage Cancer Believe in is deeply grateful and humbled by what Stephen, and people who have supported him, are reaching for us. It has produced a wave of awareness, engagement and providing that has the likely to transform what Teenage Cancer Believe in can accomplish.

Stephen has superbly and merely articulated what it truly is like for youthful folks with cancer in his very own words, and he has chosen what he will say and when. We would never have asked a youthful man facing the finish of his daily life to tweet a image and say farewell to the planet – and no charity ever would – but when Stephen did this, it sparked a social media response that no-one particular could have predicted.

Support users talk about your perform in their words, not yours – they never reference a communications manual or use important messages. We discover that assisting young men and women shape the companies we supply and what and how we speak implies we can be more authentic and accurate to them. This is certainly correct of our annual conference which sees 300 youthful men and women collect for a weekend and has been named Locate Your Sense of Tumour – by them, not by us.

Crucially Stephen’s story has been emotionally real. A young guy at the end of his lifestyle had a dream to increase £1m for the charity that had aided him. His dream captured people’s hearts. It was straightforward to give to. The emotion triggered the sharing. His predicament meant it had urgency and, the good news is, the infrastructure was in area.

We had been operating with Stephen on his fundraising for months. He had his very own JustGiving webpage and we had already set up the text to donate code. This meant that when his “last thumbs up” picture tweet got picked up, individuals have been capable to act immediately. We’ve been receiving all around 2,000 text donations an hour.

What we have learnt from the story is to reply swiftly, know your supporters and make confident you will not only verify your social media feeds in workplace hrs. This has took place due to the fact it was not a manufactured try to “go viral”. Folks see via that. I am positive there will be other lessons also, but for now our focus is on creating confident we honour the enormous present this younger guy has offered us and the youthful men and women who want our assist.

Kate Collins is the director of fundraising at Teenage Cancer Trust. Stephen continues to battle the disease and is still posting

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Stephen"s Story: a dying teenager gives charities a moving lesson in storytelling