The C List: How I Survived Bowel Cancer

This is not a 'misery memoir'. Neither is it an, 'I've got cancer and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me' book. It is about the daft and sometimes funny things that happen to people living with cancer and useful tips for making the best of it.'

Rachel Bown is a marketing director and single mother of two, who was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer at the age of 45. With a taboo-breaking sense of humour, Rachel shares her experiences and the lists she made to help gain some control over what quickly became an unpredictable life. Both funny and poignant, she vividly describes her battle with cancer and the often absurd situations she finds herself in from a brutally flippant surgeon to her latest fashion accessory, a colostomy bag, to embarking on a project to build a 40ft-banana giraffe on the roof of her house.

Bowel cancer is the second-biggest cancer killer in the UK, but there is still a shockingly low level of public awareness about it. Rachel offers you all the nuggets of information she picked up from hundreds of sources along the way, including questions you should ask your surgeon, the best treats whilst on chemo, things to look out for in a blood test, and how not to react when someone tells you they have cancer.