No Spare Life: One Woman's Journey through Cancer by Rosaleen Glennon

I'd been living in Germany for eight years when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, in September 2010. On gleaning the news after a biopsy, I went into a spin. I don't remember leaving the doctor's office on the third floor of the hospital and getting into the lift. I began to think again when the lift doors opened and I stepped out on the ground floor. I turned around three times on the spot and thought, "What am I going to do now? Does he mean I should get my affairs in order?"

I almost laughed at my own thinking. I realised that we have absolutely no control. We might think we have but, we don't.

I had been writing for a number of years and so, it was natural for me to write about the cancer as a way of making sense of what was happening; as a way of keeping a record of my life and as a way to honour it (the cancer). I realise that everybody's experience of cancer is different but, I want to publish what I have written in the form of poetry, short pieces of prose and artwork to share what happened to me, so that it might help other people who have had such a diagnosis as well as their families and friends. I hope it helps.

No Spare Life: one woman's journey through cancer by Rosaleen Glennon
Anthology, literature, poetry and prose
96 printed pages, illustrated in full colour, paperback
First published in Ireland, in 2016, by Rosaleen Glennon
ISBN: 978-0-9956425-0-8

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