227. This Might Surprise You: A Breast Cancer Story by @hayleygullen.com
I really enjoyed and appreciated this graphic memoir - a funny, moving and above all honest account of navigating the realities of cancer treatment at the age of 37.

Thank you so much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it 🙂

Awesome - thank you so much! I hope you enjoy it!

I appreciated being called brave if I felt the person genuinely meant it and wasn’t just saying it to distance themselves. It still doesn’t feel like the right word, though. How can one be “brave” when simply reacting to a dreadful situation?

2/5

I’m thankfully cancer free but the argument still stands even if I wasn’t.

Charities use the heart-rending personal stories, and I understand why. But complex decisions like this, with opportunity costs, can’t be made on the basis of these stories alone.

I totally agree with you. Similarly I see some people campaigning for younger women to have mammograms. I was diagnosed at age 37 (I found a lump). But as I understand it, the risk of false positives means that the harms outweigh the benefits - even if my cancer might have been picked up sooner.

This is such an emotive subject (I know - I had breast cancer and my dad died recently from prostate cancer) Which is precisely why decisions need to be made by accountable, expert panels.

Campaigns like this (I’m thinking of campaigns to get drugs funded on the NHS) can also be unintentionally cruel because they give false hope to very vulnerable, ill people who might not fit the criteria even if they got the win.

You can buy my book here, or from pretty much any bookstore or online outlet in the UK and USA.

5/5

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/this-migh...

You can call me “brave” for sharing my story too, if you like. But creating this book felt as inevitable to me as the ordeals of cancer treatment. Strange, but true.

4/5

3/5

I appreciated being called brave if I felt the person genuinely meant it and wasn’t just saying it to distance themselves. It still doesn’t feel like the right word, though. How can one be “brave” when simply reacting to a dreadful situation?

2/5

Yes. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard. But we can’t fund treatments based on which causes get the most shares on social media.

Awesome thank you so much! I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, don’t know if that’s the case or not, but Amazon US should have some (and Indy bookstores should be able to order it too)

I very much relate to this.