Published in 2022
240 pages
Dame Deborah Anne James DBE (1981 – 2022) was an English journalist, podcast host and charity campaigner. In 2016, she was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. She later began to host the You, Me and the Big C podcast on BBC Radio 5 about her struggles with her illness.
In May 2022, James said she began treatment under hospice care. Less than 48 hours after her post, over £3 million was raised for her campaign, the Bowelbabe Fund. Two days later, James was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). In her final days, James lived at her parents’ house in Woking, Surrey, where she died on 28 June 2022, aged 40, from cancer.
What is this book about?
A profoundly moving and inspiring personal memoir on how to turn your mind from a negative spiral into realistic and rebellious hope.
I was alive when I should have been dead. In another movie, I missed the sliding door and departed this wondrous life long ago. Like so many others, I had to learn to live not knowing if I have a tomorrow, because, statistically, I didn’t. At the age of 35, I was blindsided by incurable bowel cancer – I was given less than an 8 per cent chance of surviving five years. Five years later, my only option was to live in the now and to value one day at a time.
How do you turn your mind from a negative spiral into realistic and rebellious hope? How do you stop focusing on the why and realise that ‘why not me’ is just as valid a question?
When Deborah James was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer at just 35, she learned a powerful lesson: the way we respond to any given situation empowers or destroys us. And with the right skills and approach, we can all face huge challenges and find strength and hope in the darkest of places.
How to Live When You Could Be Dead will show you how. It will awaken you to question your life as if you didn’t have a tomorrow and live it in the way you want to today. By harnessing the power of positivity and valuing each day as though it could be your last, you’ll find out, as Deborah did, that it is possible to live with joy and purpose, no matter what.
