The Patient, The Dis-Ease, The Future. Destigmatising Cancer

This reflective paper emerged from a request for the author to speak at the European Association for Cancer Education 27 th Annual Scientific Meeting, held in Caen, Normandy in March 2014. The title of the session was; ‘A patient and his disease’. However, I chose to re-title and add a sub-title to make it; ‘A patient and his dis-ease: Something to think about and to challenge your views’. Diagnosed a second time with cancer in January 2020, the author revisited the presentation and offers an updated reflection on being diagnosed with cancer twice, the second time during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The paper challenges some views often held and argues that we should all be de-stigmatising cancer.