IN OCTOBER 2014 Sophie Sabbage had terminal lung cancer diagnosed. She was 48 years old with a four-year-old daughter, Gabriella. The cancer had spread to her spine and her brain was riddled with “too many tumours to count”. No one expected her to live more than a few months, yet sitting at her kitchen table in a beautiful converted barn in Kent, she looks the picture of health. Strange as it sounds, she says having cancer has been a healing force in her life.
“I still have a tumour in my lung. It’s greatly reduced and I’m working to keep it stable or even get rid of it — though my oncologist tells me that’s not possible,” she says. “But in many ways I feel better than I’ve ever felt.”
The outer glow comes from a recent week of sunshine in Morocco. The inner one she ascribes to applying to herself the business principles she used for many years as a psychologist running workshops on leadership and personal development.
At first, as anyone would, she panicked. Then she asked herself what having cancer might teach her about life . . . and a journey began that became a compelling blog, “I have cancer, cancer does not have me”.
When she self-published online The Cancer Whisperer last October, on the anniversary of her diagnosis, it went straight to the top of the ebook charts and is to be published in conventional form this week. “It’s easy to be victimised by cancer and just let the doctors tell you what to do because it’s so scary and daunting,” she says.
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“But being in the driving seat is psychological fuel and I believe the way I’ve responded to the disease has made a difference. It’s enabled me to make some controversial choices that I think have been very beneficial.”
At the start she couldn’t focus: “It was a devastating shock. I was blindsided because I felt well and was so happy in so many ways. I had my miracle daughter [born after several tries at IVF]. The devastating part was the prospect of not raising Gabriella and that still brings tears to my eyes.”
Her only symptom had been a sharp pain in her back “for approximately one hour”, but she had an intuition that something was very wrong. She writes about a chest x-ray several weeks later: “There it was. The tumour was so big it had pressed on the pleura of the lung. I was in deep shock and the shocks kept coming . . . that was my darkest hour.”
The knowledge that she had cancer changed everything. “From the moment I was told ‘Your disease is incurable’, I started to die,” she says.
“The pain began. I started coughing and two weeks later was so breathless I could hardly walk up the stairs. I could feel the life force draining away.”
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Sabbage started having radiation and chemotherapy and — a believer in the power of alternative therapies — changed her diet, cutting out sugar, wheat, alcohol and carbohydrates. She also underwent acupuncture, detoxing and ozone therapy and took huge doses of vitamin C — anything that would help to “stabilise” her body while she attempted to clear her head.
She refused to be a “patient” carried along on the conveyor belt of cancer treatment and insisted that hospital appointments be fitted around her diary, not the other way round.
She sent friends a round-robin email about what they could do or say to be helpful, including letting her despair or cry if she needed to: in hospital a nurse had become uncomfortable at seeing her weep: “But what more appropriate time to cry than when you have been told you have cancer and are dying? The human mind has a huge effect on the body and when we lock in emotions like fear or grief — and grief was huge for me because of my daughter — it becomes a spiritual disease and must take a toll.”
Most of her tumours have shrunk or disappeared. She has discovered that a faulty gene gave her a one-in-six chance of contracting lung cancer and has combed through her life to see what might have helped to trigger that gene — an eating disorder, smoking and drinking in her twenties, or more recent broken friendships or family problems:
“The question is not ‘Am I to blame?’ but ‘What role might I have played in the disease and what can I change?’”
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In her quest to live — or die — in peace she came to detest the analogy so often used of sufferers “battling” against cancer. “My hackles rise every time I hear that. It sets up a win-or-lose mindset. You beat it or you get beaten. It undermines the hundreds, maybe thousands, of psychological and spiritual victories a cancer patient has between diagnosis and death.
“Think of David Bowie, who made his dying a work of art — and people said he lost the battle. I needed to embrace this thing rather than fight it. Cancer is an illness, not an enemy, and like all illnesses it’s showing us what’s out of kilter with our mind, body and spirit.
“It’s poignant for me because I left university with a first and an eating disorder, so something was already wrong. My body had been a battle zone and I needed to make peace.”
With peace comes acceptance, whatever the outcome. But what she can’t come to terms with is the thought of not being there when Gabriella needs her. “It’s the hardest thing because I want to raise my child and I love her with my whole heart, soul and being,” she says.
“We’re very close and perhaps not seeing her grow up just breaks my heart — but I wonder, would I have done this much if I hadn’t had her? Probably not. I said to my husband, John, the other day: ‘I wonder if God gave me Gabriella because I needed a really big purpose to live?’ So she inspires me every day to keep going.”
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As we speak, someone somewhere is being told they have cancer. Sabbage has a message for them: “Nothing is written in stone. Don’t let anyone predict the future for you, get help to deal with your shock and your fear and do everything you can to put yourself in the driving seat. You can’t control the outcome, but you can determine the kind of experience you have . . . so you’re in charge of a lot more than you think.”
She’s planning a 50th birthday party to be held in the orchard adjoining the barn in June. No guarantees, but the chances are she’ll make it.
The Cancer Whisperer by Sophie Sabbage will be published on Thursday by Coronet at £14.99