How to Live When You Could be Dead

How to Live When You Could be Dead is an amazing and very moving book by Deborah James.

You should, Deborah asserts, live your life as if you d not have a tomorrow. That you should live your life today, the way you want to live it.

Deborah points out in her book that she was alive when she should not have been. Should have been dead, in fact.

She refers to the film/movie Sliding Doors, pointing out that in another movie she missed the sliding door and "departed this wonderous life long ago."

When she was 35 years of age Deborah was stunned by a diagnosis of an incurable bowel cancer. She was given less than an 8% chance of making five years. 

Five years later she realised that her only logical option was to live "in the now" and to value each day of her life as it happened.

Deborah tells her story in this remarkable book, how she decided to blog about her experiences using the Instagram social media platform using the sobriquet of @bowelbabe.

As a result she became a widely read and popular columnist, the author of F*** You, Cancer and a much listened to podcast broadcaster and presenter, which included the chart-topper You, Me and the Big C. 

This year Deborah was awarded a Damehood in recognition of her amazing fundraising for cancer charities and also for her tireless campaigning for bowel cancer awareness.

The book is a record of how all this was from Deborah's own point of view. The high points, the low points, moments of hope, bleaker moments and how she and her family coped and thrived amidst the diagnosis of untreatable bowel cancer and the many people and new friends she met on her journey.

Deborah died on 28 June 2022.

The book is published by Vermilion, which is an imprint of Ebury Publishing at £14.99 in hardback. 

Ebury has pledged to pay £3.00 from the sale of the book in the UK to the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK.

This book belongs with every nurse, GP or specialist who interacts with people with cancer and their family members. It should be required reading for them. And for people with cancer and their family members, too.

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