The Elephant in the Room: Stories About Cancer Patients and their Doctors PDF
Preview The Elephant in the Room: Stories About Cancer Patients and their Doctors
The Elephant in the Room Jonathan Waxman The Elephant in the Room Stories About Cancer Patients and their Doctors Author Jonathan Waxman Flow Foundation Professor of Oncology Imperial College London ISBN 978-0-85729-894-2 e-ISBN 978-0-85729-895-9 DOI 10.1007/978-0-85729-895-9 Springer London Dordrecht Heidelberg New York British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2011938120 © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2012 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publica- tion may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic repro- duction in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc., in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Product liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for information about drug dos- age and application thereof contained in this book. In every individual case the respec- tive user must check its accuracy by consulting other pharmaceutical literature. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To Naomi, Thea and Freddie. About the Author Jonathan Waxman is Flow Foundation Professor of Oncology at Imperial College London. He founded The Prostate Cancer Charity, the first United Kingdom national organisa- tion promoting research and patient support for this condi- tion. He is a clinician who has helped develop new treatments for cancer, which are now part of standard practice. He is the author of eleven books on cancer, a book on medical negli- gence law and a novel, The Fifth Gospel. He directs a labora- tory research group, and a clinical trial group. He has raised funds for the building of the Hammersmith Cancer Centre whose spirit aims to combine the best of conventional and alternative therapies. He helped establish an All Party Parliamentary Group to improve cancer treatment and ratio- nalise cancer research throughout the UK. He has developed and led successful and unsuccessful media campaigns to rationalise cancer treatments and change government health policy. vii Beginnings: Jimmy’s Gift This book started life as a conversation between the writer, J G Ballard, and his doctor. I was his doctor. The conversa- tions were to be about life and death. Jimmy had prostate cancer, and the plan for the book had reached a point where an outline had been sketched and the content planned. I had put to Jimmy the concept of a project about cancer. I had suggested the idea of a jointly written book based around the relationship between a patient and his specialist. Jimmy and I were hugely excited about the idea of the book. We intended to spend time together talking about the impact of cancer on his life, what it really meant to be a patient, the interactions between doctors and patients, what the doctor and the patient really thought about, and what the doctor really meant when he spoke to patients. This exchange was to be bound by a thread that took in our jour- neys through life. It was to be a contemporaneous account of two lives intertwined and interlinked. So, that’s what had been planned, and the plan was bound to extend beyond its loosely set outlines and borders. Jimmy set about writing a book proposal. But before our project could be realized, darkness struck, and Jimmy became too poorly to think about writing. And so the book was never written, and the proposal languished in my filing cabinets until the moment of Jimmy’s memorial ser- vice. This celebration of Jimmy’s life was held on the top floor of the Tate, with great views over the Thames, exotic canapés, and a gathering of friends and family who had come to cele- brate Jimmy’s life. We sat together, listening to speeches that brought together all the parts of Jimmy’s world, speeches ix
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