Read a review on the After Cancer site

‘The commitment, courage and insight of Dr Galgut displayed in this comprehensive account of the challenges of cancer survivorship 'from the front line' is both remarkable and inspiring. As one who has tried to support and campaign for hundreds of patients in these situations over thirty years I know that she speaks from the heart about what we all think, feel and endure. We can sincerely empathise with those living with fear and isolation in a world which says, 'Be glad you are alive'. This book needs wide distribution to sufferers in need of comfort and support. And -just as importantly - to medical professionals as a plea to listen and try to understand.’
Jan Millington, Cancer survivor with 'late effects'

‘This book is a remarkable testimony to the importance of psychological care, often missing in even our best cancer centres. Written by a psychologist and counsellor, who actually has been on her own cancer journey, she is well placed to analyse the basis of uncertainty every cancer patient will feel for the rest of their lives. The book is very readable and gratifyingly free of psycho-babble. It's very suitable for patients and their families as a useful aid to discussion. It contains interesting interviews with various cancer professionals who put forward their own perspectives. But the take home message is that whilst we can now cure more half of our cancer patients we need to do more to make sure their quality of life in body, mind and spirit is made as perfect as possible. Dr Galgut's short book is an excellent and thoughtful way into to this complex area for patients and indeed all health professionals dealing with cancer.’
Professor Karol Sikora, Consultant Oncologist

‘This book is a little package of experiences: not everyone suffers them but many do. Surely it's time to be realistic about the consequences of cancer treatment, the side effects which may last a lifetime. Truth telling is important but many shy away from facing hard experiences. Nevertheless, it's time to be realistic about the short and long term side effects of cancer treatment for men as well as women. Not everyone suffers the lifelong pain and the fears, as well as the failure of those around them to understand, but very many do. Anyone who has read a previous book by Cordelia Galgut will know that she can make the hardest things readable and interesting, as she does here. All of us, doctors and patients, need this hard-hitting and truthful book.’
Ruth McCurry, Retired teacher and publisher

‘Being diagnosed with a malignant melanoma was the start of a journey, the most terrifying of my life as I go from check up to check up paranoid that every ache or pain is something sinister. I know that it's not a short journey I am in this for the long haul. Cordelia's book clearly illustrates what living with cancer is really like in a very honest, open and informative way from both from a sufferer's and counselling psychologist's perspective. It's particularly invaluable because she includes practical strategies for coping longer term, including allowing yourself to accept that what you are experiencing is real, and enabling you to have the conversations you need to have with medical professionals.’
Liz Lane, Retired Managing Director

The latet review is in the British Journal of Nursing. To open the article as a PDF please click here

There is also a review in June 2020's Private Practice from BACP which you can read here

Living with the Long Term Effects of Cancer is Book of the Month for June 2020 on CairnsMoir Connections.

"This book chimed with me because like many people I have struggled with the long term emotional and physical after-effects of cancer treatment. This book validated my experience, letting me know that it wasn’t ‘just me’ that felt the way I do, and analyses the attitudes and prevailing beliefs that surround cancer ‘survival’." - Reviewer David Lettice

You can read the review here

A new review of my book.

Living with the Long Term Effects of Cancer       Dr Cordelia Galgut (2020)

This is a book I’ve been looking forward to reviewing. Dr Cordelia Galgut is a counselling psychologist, who writes from both the perspective of the professional,  and as a cancer patient. She gets it….she understands that the cancer can leave deep emotional and physical scars.

In her most recent book, she tackles head on, the often unspoken fact that many people who have had cancer can still suffer psychologically and physically for many years after the cancer treatment has passed.  There is often a mismatch between what the health care professionals believe, which is that people will recover emotionally and physically over time – and the reality for some, who will still be struggling several years later.

What I like about the book, is that it speaks for the person who has been through cancer, and gives pointers for health care professionals to understand how cancer still affects people many years after the original diagnosis. 

The book is broken down into nine chapters and covers a wide ranging number of relevant topics. This includes the fear of cancer’s return, relationships, work, issues with male cancers, and  the health care professional perspective.  Threaded through the book are the author’s personal perceptions. This provides an empathic and insightful view of how it is for those living with the long term effects of cancer.

My big ‘take home’ message from reading this book is that the person’s lived experience of cancer is very real….and the feelings and traumas post cancer can persist for many years. It’s important that we who are listening to someone’s story, validate their experience, and let people voice their reality.

Sue Long
Online Cancer Support Specialist
Maggie’s Centres.

First professional review of my book in Paradigm Explorer issue 132: Here are two quotes from the review:

“This is a very significant and courageous book”

“The messages of this book could not be more important for our understanding of living with cancer, so it should be widely read and discussed.”

This is a very significant and courageous book for health professionals, patients, carers and family members written by a psychologist who was first diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer 15 years ago and is the author of two earlier books on emotional and physical effects of living with cancer. The book questions the assumption that those affected by cancer will simply recover and get back to normal when emotional, psychological and physical side-effects can in fact produce a mismatch between optimistic clinical expectations and real life. The chapters cover the struggle of facing up to long-term effects, the dread of recurrence, effects of cancer on relationships and work, and more detailed interviews with a nurse and three doctors as well as a separate chapter on the experience after treatment with male cancers. The book is clearly structured and written, with excellent summaries aimed at different constituencies. The analysis is incisive and frank: some of the deepest issues arise from an unconscious denial of our mortality when faced with the implications of cancer and, for patients, the dread of recurrence and having to undergo further painful and extended treatment when reserves of strength and resilience have already been sapped. So being disease-free is not the same as being free of disease in an emotional and psychological sense. The messages of this book could not be more important for our understanding of living with cancer, so it should it to widely read and discussed.

Cordelia Galgut ‪@cordeliagalgut, author of Living with the Long-Term Effects of Cancer, discusses how she feels during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers some ideas that might help others who are especially vulnerable youtu.be/DQkiXEqg1YM

This is the review of the book from the After Cancer site

Finally – a book that shows we are not making up side effects

What do you get when a psychologist gets breast cancer?

At last, we get a book that contests the assumption that, after cancer treatment, we will simply ‘get better’ or ‘move on’.

The book, ‘Living with the long-term effects of Cancer’ is written by a psychologist, honestly admitting that emotional and physical side-effects post-cancer treatment can worsen over time.

Those of us living with and beyond cancer often endure a mismatch between expectations and reality; we are told that life would be easier than it actually is. So hurrah for Doctor Cordelia Galgut, who has the courage to admit that anyone post-cancer can find themselves “confused and unprepared”, as she admits in her book ‘Living with the long-term effects of Cancer’.

Galgut focusses on both sides

Written from a dual perspective- that of a psychologist who had breast cancer and who coped with the long-term effects of treatment – the book contests the assumption that the afflicted person will simply ‘get better’ or ‘move through’ to a better situation.  As I read through the book, I kept on nodding and empathising – she tells it how it is.

As she admits, emotional and physical side-effects can worsen over time, and people living beyond or with cancer often endure a mismatch between expectations and reality, because “they have been told that life would be easier than it actually is”  Oh boy! I well remember telling my surgeon that I hadn’t been told to expect nasty side effects, like my skin peeling off in sheets, nor my bones crumbling with osteoporosis, etc.

“Well, you are alive”, was his helpful reply.

Moving on

Comments like this can leave both those suffering longer and short term confused and unprepared. But the book contests the assumption that we will simply ‘get better’ or ‘move through’ to a better situation. Emotional and physical side-effects can worsen over time, and people living with or beyond cancer often endure a mismatch between expectations and reality, because they have been told that life would be easier than it actually is. This can leave both those suffering longer-term and those close to them confused and unprepared.

How to ‘use’ this book

I have made so many notes, reading the book, that it looks like it has developed a severe case of measles.  But the beauty of the book is that Dr. Galgut used medical language, albeit in easy-to-understand-form, so the reader can grab sentences from the copy and drop them into official letters, and use these when you write a letter about your treatment.  There are lots of phrases to use that spring out from the pages, and after all – this is written by a mental health professional, so they gather their arguments in a professional rather than an emotive way.

Read it to reassure yourself you are NOT making a fuss.  Here is a medical professsional who has experiencd the ‘other’ side, and is honest enough to admit there is a lot wrong with the way cancer patients can be treated.  As I read it, I was nodding to myself in agreement – here was someone who had experiened the same problems as I had.

Verite

'This book is a remarkable testimony to the importance of psychological care, often missing in even our best cancer centres. Written by a psychologist and counsellor, who actually has been on her own cancer journey, she is well placed to analyse the basis of uncertainty every cancer patient will feel for the rest of their lives. The book is very readable and gratifyingly free of psycho-babble. It's very suitable for patients and their families as a useful aid to discussion. It contains interesting interviews with various cancer professionals who put forward their own perspectives. But the take home message is that whilst we can now cure more than half of our cancer patients we need to do more to make sure their quality of life in body, mind and spirit is made as perfect as possible. Dr Galgut's short book is an excellent and thoughtful way into this complex area for patients and indeed all health professionals dealing with cancer.’

Professor Karol Sikora, Consultant Oncologist

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Read my blog in Frost Magazine here. It focuses on COVID-19 and the long-term effects of cancer.

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“I have just completed listening to the podcast - it was great on all levels - how do you manage to be so fluent with such difficult and searching questions? I think that what is so effective about both your book and this is how your complete honesty and integrity is so obvious that the truth of what you say cannot be avoided or argued away. So well done and also thankyou for being so ready to show vulnerability in a way to inform all those with ears to hear.” - Teresa Taylor, retired counsellor

Cordelia's latest podcast is here.
Cancer survivor and Psychologist, Dr @cordeliagalgut sits down with Dr @FGoodhart to discuss some of cancer's little spoken about long-term effects.

This podcast was made before #COVID2019 hit us all. Many of us #livingwithandbeyondcancer are at high risk of becoming v unwell, so all that we say in this podcast will be exacerbated by the current situation. A v scary time for many others as well

‘I was astounded to find that many others were feeling as I was’
Head over to @macmillancancer's blog to hear from @cordeliagalgut on the subject of her new book; Living With the Long-Term Effects of Cancer.
The Problem of Cancer's Long term Effects by Cordelia

Also on the blog is her poem Please Don't

Read the blog Why don’t we Acknowledge the Trauma that comes with Surviving Cancer? - by @cordeliagalgut