For those of you in the UK (or with UK proxy access) you need to go watch the BBC One video here: Inside Out North East and Cumbria (or use the iPlayer link). Quickly, as there are only a few days left to see it.
The first segment on the show is about Brenda Beecham, who’s the lovely wife of my dad’s Oxford buddy Jeremy. Though we really should call them Sir Jeremy and Lady Brenda, since the dude got knighted a while back. Here’s a photo I took of them when they were visiting in 2005 (from L to R, Jeremy, my stepmom Bertha, Dad, and Brenda):
Earlier this year Brenda found out she had colon cancer and that it was terminal. One of those examples of doctors not being cautious enough when seeing symptoms, I guess, combined with a disease that doesn’t take its time. This sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
But rather than getting angry and hating the world (i.e., what I would do) Brenda went and made a documentary about her illness, in the hope that it might encourage people to get themselves checked when they experience similar symptoms. There’s a short article about her here, for the rest of us who can’t view the BBC video.
Brenda’s going through chemo right now, and remains cheerful and upbeat in a rather superhuman way. It’s sort of entirely unsurprising that she’s a life coach, eh? Hopefully she’ll share her secret for seeing the silver lining in this dark cloud.
(Oh, and if anyone in the UK is able to grab a copy of that video for me, I’d really appreciate it. I was able to watch it by using a UK proxy, but was unable to download the video despite trying various Ruby and Perl scripts.)
Update Thanks to Josh we can view the article (in lame quality, but better than nothing) here on the BBC site.