A few more diary entries from Ray:

25/7/09 Day 6/2. A lot better today. Off to soccer with Tahnee. Working as the linesman today - enjoying fresh air. How many people in the middle of chemotherapy run up and down a soccer pitch? Nausea easing.

26/7/09 Day 7/2. Sleep in. Out to lunch with friends. Enjoyed a glass of wine. Mouth and nostrils impr0ving.

27/7/09 Day 8/2. Seems to be a pattern in the 2nd week. Nausea improves, stomach settles. Flu like symptoms - runny nose, sore throat, cracked nasal passages.

28/7/09 Day 9/2. Same as yesterday. Nostrils quite sore. Throat easing, no nausea. Eating well. Enjoyed a good walk just before dark.

29/7/09. Day 10/2 Down to Melbourne all day - visiting chaplains. In great spirits. Flu like symptoms persisting. Drinking lots. Enjoyed great evening meal with a friend. Glass of wine.

30/7/09 Day 11/2. Flu like symptoms easing. Throat not as dry. Still eating very well. Drinking lots. Spirit good. Spent day in Kinglake interviewing.

31/7/09 Day 12/2. Flu like symptoms almost gone. Drinking lots still. Fitful sleep. Felt a little cold today - extra layer on. Ready for the next (3rd and final for this lot) round of chemo on Monday. Had a pleasant evening with Marg and the girls - went to the movies and then pizza.

Reading a profoundly moving account of the life of Treya Wilber, wife of Ken Wilber, a transpersonal philosopher. Treya succombed to metastatic breast cancer after a 5 year fight and the book records her journal with commentary by Ken. The book is called "Grace and Grit - Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Wilber". The book inspires me to reflect on an intriguing question about the difference between how we understand "illness" and "sickness"

Think of illness (in this context) as a medical or mental condition that is clinically diagnosed using a system or predetermined set of criteria and sickness as a description or cultural assumption about a person's medical condition. For example gout, an illness can be diagnosed as an inherited form of arthritis with an excess of uric acid in the blood, characterised by painful joint inflamation especially in the toe and thumb. No problems here. But gout as a sickness has stereotypes about it being a "rich person's disease and therefore one might deserve their condition if one overconsumes or lives the high life? Think of STD's or a mental illness such as schizophrenia and the cultural assumptions we might make about these as "sicknesses."
What are the cultural assumptions we might make about cancer (as a sickness)? I would value your comments and reflections. Be gutsy in your response.