How I Said Bah! to cancer - Stephanie Butland

(I’ve got a SIGNED copy of ‘How I Said Bah! to cancer: A Guide to Thinking, Laughing, Living and Dancing Your Way Through‘ to give a way at the end of this post)

October 2011 is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. One in every nine women in the UK will develop breast cancer at some point in her life – which means more than 45,000 cases are diagnosed each year. It has become the most common cancer in the UK, and it’s probably fair to say that we all know of someone who has or has had breast cancer. But not everyone has such a refreshing approach to talking and dancing with cancer and that’s why I am HONOURED to host Stephanie Butland today:

This book tells how one woman said ‘Bah!’ to cancer through thinking strategies, a proactive approach to treatment, and a determination to keep the rest of her life going and retain a sense of humour (most of the time!). It shares everything she learnt along the way, from the nature of cancer cells and chemotherapy drugs, to how she was able to help her friends and family to help her.

‘I was never going to die from cancer. That hard lump peeping out of the top of my bra was aggressive but it was small enough to be contained, and I was young and strong and otherwise well. All the signs were good. Words like “lucky” and “caught in time” were thrown around like rice at a wedding. No, I was never going to die from cancer. But from the beginning, I never planned simply to survive it. Oh no. I was going to say a great big Bah! to it. Please, join in. Cancer? Bah!’

Truthful, personal, funny, and above all helpful, this book is the straight-talking best friend that will help you survive your cancer journey - or support a loved one on their journey.

Unflinching, refreshing, layered with humour, with positivity and with honesty, Stephanie offers tips, advice and an utterly inspiring take on how to dance with cancer. ‘How I Said Bah! to cancer‘ deserves, needs and absolutely should be supported. It has the potential to change the way we view and treat cancer. Please, I urge you, seek this one out.

Asking Stephanie:

For me, describing you as ‘inspirational’ seems too weak a word. You’re utterly amazing. Can you tell my blog friends how your dance with cancer began? It began with a lump sticking out of the top of my bra. If it hadn’t been so close to the surface, I think I might not have found it in time. At 37 with no history of breast cancer in the family I didn’t really think I was eligible for it, and I didn’t really check my breasts properly or anything grown-up like that. But, it was a cancer, and so I had surgery, and chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, and I still take drugs, and I was so, so lucky that the cancer was caught before it had had the chance to spread further than my breast. My chances of still being alive in 2018 (10 years after diagnosis) are more than 80%, and as cancer odds go, they’re worth taking.

And, in a similar way, how would you describe cancer? A cancer is a funny little thing - it’s a cell that goes wrong and won’t stop going wrong and doesn’t even know it’s going wrong, and in that process can destroy a whole, miraculous human body.

The thing to remember about cancer, though, is that it has really great PR, because everyone who meets it is sure it means the end of them. And of course there was a time when that was more or less true. But now, cancer doesn’t mean dead. Cancer means that yes, you might die, but your chances of living are better than they’ve ever been, and if you go into the process with an open mind you might come out of the other end with a better life. I did, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I would never have chosen my diagnosis - but there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than where I am now, and in a funny way, I have cancer to thank for that.

You’re a Master Trainer in de Bono Thinking methods. I’d like to know a little bit more about that, please, and how the methods helped you. Dr. Edward de Bono is the world’s leading authority on the teaching of thinking as a skill. Early in my career as a trainer, I was frustrated by the way established habits of thought stopped people from changing their behaviour, so I decided to try to find out whether it was possible to train people to think differently. Put that into Google and the first thing that comes out is de Bono, and I’ve been working with Six Thinking Hats (R) and Lateral Thinking (TM) ever since, helping teams, organisations and individuals to think more creatively and more effectively. It’s rewarding and exciting work. And doing it meant that I understood how very much what’s in your head influences your perception of the world - and if you change your perception, everything changes. That was the starting point for the way I approached cancer: how could I think differently to make my life easier? So I thought dance instead of battle. I thought of chemotherapy as particles of bouncing, happy light filling my body. I thought of long afternoons when I couldn’t do anything much as the opportunity to learn to knit socks.

And how did blogging add to your dance? The blog began as a good way to keep my friends and family informed about what I was doing and how treatment was going. But it soon became a way of processing experience, a little every day, which made cancer easier to cope with. And then, as more people started to read the blog, I realised that I could be helpful to others, and that made me feel that all those blisters from my dancing shoes were worthwhile!

So your journey from blog into publication, how did that happen? With a lot of help. First, friends and family read my first goes at writing the book, and were enthusiastic enough for me to approach some people in publishing. Then, I got great help from Nicola Morgan and Scott Pack. Then Twitter got me an agent (Ben Johncock posted the story on the October 21), and in February this year Hay House made an offer. From first pen-to-paper to book-in-hand, I think we’re probably talking 2 and a half years. Which, for publishing, is positively breakneck speed.

What would you say to someone who had recently been diagnosed with cancer? Don’t panic. Not everyone who is diagnosed with cancer dies of it.

Don’t forget you are still a whole person, you are still everything that is in your life that is not cancer, and cancer doesn’t have to define you. Let people help you. They want to. It isn’t a sign of weakness to let the people who love you show that love. Ask your medical team a lot of questions. Don’t let anything go unexplained. It’s your body, your life, and you’re entitled to ask everything you want to.

Who do you feel would be your ideal reader? Is ‘Bah!’ only for people with cancer? I think my ideal reader is probably someone who wants to understand more about cancer, and the process of cancer treatment, and has an open mind about how to approach it. The book is as much for people who don’t have a cancer as those who do - statistically, most of us will watch someone else dance with cancer, even if we don’t do it ourselves, so the more everyone understands about the process, the better.

And, finally, (with the skillful smoothness of the finest of interviewers) do you in any way know Simon Cowell? Um. The short answer is no, but if we take the ’6 degrees of separation’ route, my daughter’s friend once auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent, though she didn’t get through, and Mr C wasn’t at those auditions, but probably someone who knew him was. So… the long answer is also no. Sorry.

I’ve a SIGNED copy of ‘How I Said Bah! to Cancer’ by Stephanie Butland to give away. Simply leave a ‘please pick me’ comment by 3pm (GMT) October 28, then I’ll pop all names in a mug and ask a small child to select a winner. This competition is open to all.

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About the author: Stephanie Butland lives in Northumberland with her family. She writes, she trains thinking skills, and she works with individuals to help them to think more effectively. She also knits, reads, bakes, and loves the theatre and long walks on quiet beaches. Stephanie was diagnosed with a breast cancer in October 2008. Now she’s thriving. For more information please go to www.bahtocancer.com