How to get through chemotherapy: Decca Aitkenhead on cancer treatment

Before it happened to me, I never truly understood how awful chemo could be: no description can do it justice. But there are ways to ease its horrors that feature in none of the official advice, and I want everyone to know about them

If you were born after 1960, the odds that you will get cancer in your lifetime are now one in two. It is an extraordinary statistic. Even if you turn out to be one of the lucky ones, half of the people around your kitchen table this morning will at some point sit in a doctor's surgery and be given the news that they have cancer. If the numbers continue in the same relentless direction, before long, it will be most of them.

Not all will have chemotherapy. The fortunate ones can be cured in other ways, while the truly unfortunate will have cancers chemo cannot treat. I met one of those unluckiest of souls only the other day. It hadn't occurred to me until then to feel very grateful for having been eligible for what was, without a doubt, the most unpleasant medical ordeal of my life.