Let’s talk about cancer treatment, not ‘cancer journeys’

It is astonishing that “cancer diaries” (Why I live in dread of another cancer confessional, 18 April) have proliferated to the extent that some of your correspondents (As a cancer patient, I needed distraction, Letters, Anne Hay, 23 April) can describe them as cliches or tediously omnipresent.

Perhaps there has been a trend towards “oversharing”, but on the whole this is surely a corrective to the dreadful mandatory silence that surrounded cancer not so long ago.

When my mother developed terminal breast cancer in the 1960s, one of the most frightening aspects of the experience for the family was the sense – picked up from everyone around us including doctors and teachers – that we could not even utter the awful name of her illness nor talk about her predicament, even to one another. We lived in an oppressive silence which isolated us and served no good purpose. If the pendulum has swung the other way it is probably a good thing.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh

• As a cancer survivor I totally agree with Anne Hay. I stopped going to Macmillan events because speakers keep banging on about “my cancer journey”.

As a patient, what I need is practical advice about how to get quicker appointments, what I can copy from better treatment offered in other countries, and someone to campaign for better UK cancer treatment; it is currently the worst in Europe.

If we campaign together we can improve. If anyone wants to join me to start campaigning (the postcode lottery is my first target) contact me via aftercancers.com
Verite Reily Collins
Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

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