Healing Stories Network

The Reading Room

Honest, first-person companions to the conditions, treatments, and choices explored across our library.

A treatment that reprograms a patient's own immune cells to fight cancer, with remarkable results for some blood cancers. What ...

Vaccines tailored to a person's own tumour are among the most exciting ideas in cancer research. What they are, how they differ...

December 3, 2025 Cancer by the Numbers

Cancer in data: the global scale of the disease, and the quieter good-news story of how much survival has improved since the 19...

There's no right way to feel after hearing the word 'cancer'. A few things the people in our Cancer Journeys collection wish th...

From the shock of diagnosis to treatment and life afterward. What people who have faced breast cancer want others to know, in t...

September 2, 2025 Prostate Cancer: An Honest Companion

The most common cancer in men is also among the most survivable. What diagnosis, the treatment choices, and life afterward are ...

Often highly treatable, but a cancer diagnosis all the same. What thyroid cancer involves, what treatment and life afterward ar...

November 19, 2024 Lung Cancer: An Honest Companion

A diagnosis surrounded by fear and stigma, and far more hopeful than it once was. What lung cancer involves today, and what peo...

November 5, 2024 Colon Cancer: An Honest Companion

Highly treatable when caught early, and increasingly seen in younger people. What colon cancer involves, why screening matters ...

The most serious skin cancer, and one of the most preventable and detectable. What melanoma involves, why checking your skin ma...

A guide to our Cancer Journeys shelf — twenty anthologies of first-person testimony, organised by diagnosis and treatment.