Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4091 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-08
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Once upon a time, being "unwell" meant a columnist was, how shall we put it, indisposed. Now, being truly unwell is no excuse for not filing your copy, and the resulting column is in danger of becoming something of a genre. If so, then here is its best exponent. John Diamond was just a common-or-garden Times columnist, a "sometime smoking, unexercised and overweight man of fortyish", and, being an expert hypochondriac, expectantly waiting for his first heart attack. Until 27 March 1997. Then he was diagnosed as having cancer. C is his "attempt to write the book I was looking for the night I got the bad news." C is a blow-by-blow account of the progress of his cancer and its various treatments, interlaced with forays into the daunting medical literature, autobiographical reminiscences, and meditative reflections on what this all means. As a guide to cancer, Diamond is usefully knowledgeable, able to cut through the medical profession's defensive euphemisms and tell us what's really going on. As a guide to himself, Diamond is unstintingly honest, so we get the whole man with all his personal strengths and foibles, and it's actually difficult to read the prognosis with which he leaves us. And to produce that degree of engagement is an achievement for any writer. --Alan Stewart

Synopsis
Shortly before his 44th birthday, John Diamond received a call from the doctor who had removed a lump from his neck. Having been assured for the previous 2 years that this was a benign cyst, Diamond was told that it was cancerous. This is the story of Diamond's life with, and without, a lump.

Customer Reviews

It's honest, but I'm glad that I didn't have it at the time
I must admit that I usually don't read books about cancer. Having received this book yesterday it is difficult to put down. However, when I was going through the same illness - I actually had cancer on both sides of my throat,which is rare and I have since understood through the body language of my doctors doesn't usually bode well for survival - I made a point of not reading books about cancer. In the same way, I avoided the last chapters of those handy little leaflets that one finds in cancer wards. 4.5 years after my treatment (chemo + 7 weeks of radiotherapy) it is easier for me to read this: I recognize all of it. I'm glad that I didn't read this at the time: it would have made me more pessimistic. I would caution any one who has oral cancer who reads this: the side effects are there, but they don't necessarily last. The loss of taste, the absence of saliva and consequent dry mouth, the tightening of muscles and their locking, the possible speech impediment - these are all things that can disappear over time: they did in my case and my impression was that this is "pioneer territory".

Compelling
This book is apparently now required reading for oncologists and their ilk who have to deal with cancer patients and their relatives on a daily basis. This is a good thing, as so often, people in these tragic situations get ground up and spat out by the system, rather than helped by it.
Diamond was one of the first people to write about his condition and the situations in which he found himself. Now there are a plethora of books out there, all worthy in their own way, but which perhaps make this book just one of millions and liable to be missed, which is a shame.
Much of the pleasure of the book, and it is a pleasure to read, despite the painfulness of the material, is in Diamond's uniquely funny and self deprecating voice, which is sorely missed now that he is gone.
This does not make for comfortable reading material, but it is good to see someone get angry and be human about their pain, rather than turning into Mother Theresa and insisting that everything is alright. Of course everything is not alright, and we feel time and again that Diamond has to literally pull himself up by his bootstraps to face what is to come, and we sense the anxiety and fear in him that things will not go right, and what will he do?
As ever, there are no right answers here. The only thing we can do is understand the individual and their need to cope with what comes in whatever way is appropriate to them. That he allowed us to share his feelings, for however brief a time is an honour, and of all the books of this kind this is one of the best, equalled only by Ruth Picardie's also groundbreaking and heartbreaking work, Before I Say Goodbye.

C: Cowards get cancer too
It is not an exagerration, it is impossible to put this book down. I read it within two evenings. The knowledge, the insight, the wit and honesty that John Diamond writes with is unparalleled for a book of this genre.