Dame Deborah James has opened up on the emotional struggles she is facing during her battle with terminal bowel as she spends the time she has left with her family.
The You, Me and the Big C podcast host, 40, has been battling bowel cancer for five years and has been under hospice care at home for almost a month after being told she was no longer able to have active treatment for the disease.
Dame Deborah admitted she feels anger about the cruel disease ending her life early, telling ‘Dying is really hard. I’ve been consumed by anger this week, in all honesty, I’ve been a real b***h.
‘I keep shouting at people and pushing them away. I don’t want to die.’
The cancer campaigner has been living at the home of her parents, Alistair and Heather, so as not to die in the house she shares with her husband Seb and their two children, Hugo, 14, and Eloise, 12.
She has also chosen to only see family and not friends in her last days as she doesn’t want them to remember her ‘like this’.
Dame Deborah added: ‘There’s no right or wrong way to die. I’m still doing this my way. I’m frustrated with my situation because I don’t want to die. I don’t think I will ever really accept it.
‘I was given days to a week to live when I left the hospital. But I’m still here. I don’t really believe that it’s happening.
‘It all feels like a horrible joke. Watching the demise of my body is really, really sad.’
She admitted it was after being ‘fit and healthy’ throughout most of her years of living with cancer.
Dame Deborah has found that her emotions change ‘second by second, hour by hour’ and she is fearful of death as she doesn’t know what to expect and is aware of everything she will be leaving behind.
She believes death is the ‘last taboo’ and hopes that by speaking out about it, it may bring comfort to others in similar situations.
Her BowelBabe fund has raised over £6.5million for cancer research since she revealed she was now under hospice care, and she says fundraising has given her a ‘purpose’ in the most difficult time.
