'Cancer doesn't have rules' (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

'Cancer doesn't have rules'

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Musician Daphne Moody tells Lesley Bates about a place that became very special to her.

BREAST cancer survival rates are improving dramatically, but there's more to surviving cancer than medical treatment, as many who have made the journey will testify.

At the beginning of this month, the UK's first holistic cancer care charity celebrated its 25th birthday.

Hundreds of people packed into Bristol Cathedral for a thanksgiving service in honour of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and actress Sheila Hancock, who benefited from the centre's regime after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, gave the address.

Among the congregation was classical violinist Daphne Moody, a familiar face to music-lovers in south Wiltshire through her involvement with the Sarum Orchestra and the Eberle Quartet.

Mother-of-three Daphne (54), who lives in Downton, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001.

"The lead-up to the actual diagnosis was the worst time - a mixture of fear, unknown waters, and the first real question of my own mortality," she says.

"Diagnosis was a dull thud - 'It's me'.

"But knowing for certain meant that I could start to deal with it, which I did."

Dealing with it, in Daphne's case, meant surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but Daphne felt there was more to recovery.

"The doctor's job is to focus on the medical side. "Their treatment is centred on the little blob on your body that has gone wrong, and they can't possibly focus on the mental and spiritual side."

Although her medical treatment was first rate, Daphne was aware that what was missing was support and information. She says she already knew about the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, having read about it when it first opened.

The centre was co-founded in 1980 by Penny Brohn, who was living with cancer, and her friend Pat Pilkington, to develop the support system - the "care for the mind, the spirit, the emotions, the heart and the soul" - that Penny felt she desperately needed.

It started in the home of Pat and her husband, Canon Pilkington, but has since expanded and moved to its current premises in a large residential house in Clifton.

The Prince of Wales became its patron in 1997 and Sheila Hancock and journalist Kate Adie are among its vice-presidents.

The centre pioneered the Bristol Approach to cancer care, which works hand-in-hand with medical treatment and provides a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual support, using complementary therapies and self-help techniques, including practical advice on nutrition. It is aimed at anyone with cancer, regardless of gender, and is also helpful for families and carers.

Daphne had already adapted her diet along the lines advocated by the centre, and signed up for a two-day Bristol Approach taster course in April 2002.

"I was already on the Bristol diet and had started to look at such things as reflexology and acupuncture," she says.

"I went along to hear what they had to say and came out on a sort of cloud.

"It was the most wonderful place - they made you feel more secure, in charge of yourself again.

"When you are diagnosed with a serious illness, all that is taken away from you, you are disempowered."

Regaining control of your life, she feels, is major part of the recovery process.

What the centre does, she says, is help you to learn to live with cancer without it clouding your life.

"I wanted to know what I could do about it - I needed to be proactive.

"It's made me look at my life completely differently, re-evaluate things and make major life changes in what I do and how I do it."

As well as nutritional advice, the centre's approach includes meditation, visualisation and relaxation, creative therapies, massage and shiatzu, counselling and understanding the way the body's immune system works.

Daphne finds the healing quality of sessions very beneficial and has returned for day courses since her first visit.

"It's like a treat for me," she says.

"Other people might buy a dress - I take myself off to Bristol."

She appreciates that she is lucky in her relative proximity - people travel from all over Britain and the centre is keen to move to bigger premises to accommodate the increasing number of visitors.

Now she wants to raise funds for the centre by organising a concert and dinner in Salisbury next year.

"Cancer doesn't have rules and everybody's story is different," she says.

"Although I never want it back, I couldn't regret having it because it was such a wake-up call in my life, and so many better things have happened as a result of it."

The Bristol Cancer Help Centre can be contact on 0845 1232310, or visit www.bristolcancerhelp.org