"THE CHEMO had totally changed my appearance. My weight had ballooned. From being 7st 10, I had become a 9st 10, druginduced puffball, with a potato head, no hair, no eyebrows and worst of all, no eyelashes. My eyes had gone. You can tell a lot about people from their eyes - the windows to the soul. My eyes had been replaced by two black, lifeless, hollow sockets. My face had become a pallid death mask. Yes, the chemo was working."

Carol Ann Creagh was a vivacious forty-four year old with three jobs, six children, a hectic lifestyle and an ever-so-slightly compulsive personality.

On the 16th of March 2002, however, the mad whirl came to a standstill. Carol Ann discovered a lump. It was cancer. Her painful journey towards a new kind of wellness had begun.