Author Regi Claire writes about her experience of cancer

Fighting It, by Regi Claire, looks back at the treatment and the support that she received.

Swiss-born author Regi Claire was diagnosed with Bowel Cancer in 2008 while living in Edinburgh. During her treatment at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, Regi visited Maggie's Edinburgh. "The staff were very kind and understanding, just wonderful. The centre felt like a haven of peace," Regi said.

Maggie's Edinburgh offers support and information to anyone affected by cancer. There is no need for a referral and everything is offered free of charge. Staff run a variety of practical and psycho-educational workshops and courses to help people live with through and beyond cancer. These include nutrition workshops and creative writing courses. Writing about the experience of cancer, perhaps imaginatively, can be an effective way for a person to express and understand their feelings, making them more confident about what they are going through.

Regi too chose to write and has generously shared Fighting It with Maggie's to inspire readers. She has written the below by way of an introduction.

"Now that most of our flat has been rewired and redecorated, at long last, I feel I have come full circle and things are looking up. Thanks to successful chemo- and radiotherapy and a couple of operations, I myself have been reconstructed and renewed, and so has our home, starting with plumbing followed by scaffolding and major building work. Indeed, throughout my cancer experience, it seemed as if what was happening to me was being mirrored in some way by what was happening to our house – as if we were both living, breathing organisms and somehow interlinked."

You can read Fighting It in full (.pdf) or listen to an audio version of Fighting It (.wma - 15MB). You can find out more about Regi's books on her website.