EXCLUSIVE
The late Dame Deborah James inspired us all as she campaigned for bowel cancer awareness. In her last months, she wrote How To Live When You Could Be Dead. This extract reveals how she found courage – and how we can, too
What’s your most embarrassing moment? Mine happened in a clothes shop in London when I was 24. I was in the hot changing rooms when suddenly a wave of immense, breathtaking fear came over me. My lungs felt like they ceased to function and I had the urge to run, to escape the feeling. The problem was I hadn’t put my clothes back on. So, I simply grabbed what I’d been wearing and ran out of the shop, only to realise I was slap-bang in the middle of Covent Garden during a busy weekday lunchtime wearing only my undercrackers.
This wasn’t the first time a panic attack hit me out of nowhere. I’ve lived with anxiety most of my life, going through periods of frequent, crippling panic attacks that saw me unable to drive a car and too scared to walk down a busy street. It was so severe, at times, that I ended up in A&E. I believed all the physiological symptoms I was facing were messages that my body was dying. The great irony, of course, being that when I was younger and not facing death, my fear of it was so uncontrolled that it stopped me from living. I stayed at home when I should’ve been out enjoying myself; I missed holidays because I feared flying.
Do you know what finally ‘cured’ me? The worst happened and my fear was realised – I was told I had incurable bowel cancer and I would die. I had to look my biggest fear in the eye.
I’m not suggesting the only solution to anxiety is to receive an incurable cancer diagnosis – I’d recommend CBT, therapy or mindfulness techniques instead. But honestly, my diagnosis did something nothing else could. I could have had an absolute breakdown – the panic attack to end all panic attacks. But what happened was odd and unexpected: my anxiety levels dropped. When I was forced to confront what I’d spent 20 years worrying about, something shifted. I could either curl up in a ball and await death, or I could keep living in whatever way I chose until the inevitable happened. I didn’t realise my strength until I had no choice; my fight to live was stronger than my fear of death.
People often tell me, very kindly, that they think I’m brave. But I don’t think of myself like that. When you find yourself in a horrible situation like mine, you don’t have much choice but to get on with it. I think I’m only doing what any of us would do. You don’t think, ‘I’m going to keep going because I’m brave.’ You keep going
