While the world is going crazy over Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement announcement, I’m delighted to say I have my own news to share. It’s something I never thought would happen again, after I was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer in the summer of 2023. It’s something I was told I couldn’t have due to the risk of food poisoning and infections. But a week ago today I managed it – I had a lobster with chips on my plate and ate every bit (apart from the shell and the salad, obviously).
I felt joy similar to that of a prisoner released from jail as they embrace their family outside the foreboding walls of prison after a five-year stretch. And I felt relief similar to that of a smoker who has stepped off a long haul flight to Australia and can have a cigarette after hours of tense frustration.
As a cancer-sufferer you get used to the fact that everyone, both medically trained and people just trying to be helpful, will give you different advice.
But “avoid shellfish” is one that all the healthcare professionals seemed to agree on before I started chemotherapy as, with my weakened immune system, a dodgy clam or a slightly off prawn could see me in bed with food poisoning for several days.
However, after I noticed prawn cocktail was always on the menu as a starter during my recent stay as an inpatient at my cancer hospital, I asked a doctor if it was okay to have some shellfish. And I felt happier than Travis Kelce’s mum when Taylor said yes.
Having cancer is an expensive business so my food budget is more at the level of mince and chicken thighs than delicacies from the sea – so I was delighted when my parents bought us all lobster to eat when I last saw them.
They were also the people who paid for me to have my final lobster before I started chemotherapy in 2023. And for anyone saying “lobster doesn’t taste that great, what’s the big deal?” – it is delicious, but it’s much more than that.
It’s about what the exoskeletal creature represents. Cancer has taken so much away from my life, not least a future and ripped away opportunities to have fun and make a difference to society. In place of these things it has given me osteoperosis and the prospect of an early death.
So, for me, holding a massive knife in my hand to split the lobster’s shell in two, was kind of like saying “f*** you” to cancer. It will beat me eventually but it hasn’t beaten me yet. I can do things again that I didn’t think would be possible.
And I realise I need help to be able to do them. This includes succeeding with the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign.
We want all cancer patients to have access to mental health support both during and after treatment and we need your help to tell the Government and the NHS to ensure hospitals are providing this.
Please sign the petition, and tell your friends and family to do it too, to help improve millions of lives both now and in the future.